Once the first Muzzio is killed, we use Mimic Vat to make a token copy. Then, each time we use Goryo's Vengeance, we bring back the nontoken, sacrifice it using the Legendary rule, make another token copy, and sacrifice the old token after we use it.
Oh right, we did do a sideboard version. It's something we can think about - we definitely want to get rid of Verdant Succession and Woodland Bellower for that, and perhaps also switch from Smite the Monstrous back to Gloomwidow's Feast and [c]Brace for Impact[/]? That would free up both green creatures and power > 3 creatures, we could conceivably make quite a long stage sequence...
Ohhhhhhh that is excellent! Okay, my mistake, Muzzio works great.
The Brace for Impact plan probably doesn't work anymore, since it can also target and destroy Centaur Safeguard. I'm also not sure what the best 60-card list right now looks like, and we should probably confirm we can still get started all right with Thousand-Year Storm: we'll wind up with a lot fewer copies than we had with Precursor.
On a similar note, I know that Words of Wisdom isn't feasible, but I think it's at least plausible we could go off with Vision Skeins. With one sphinx out, it draws 6, not 4, and getting it back from exile into the graveyard to repeatedly cast with Dark-Dwellers or Spellweaver Volute is vastly easier now that we've left Guildmage behind.
Ah yes, Vision Skeins is certainly a possibility. Although, are we totally sure that drawing 4 cards is not enough? (Maybe it is obvious, I haven't really checked.)
Yeah, I am at least. We spend 6 cards to get Omnisicence out (Land, SSG, Mana Vault, Mox, Eureka, Omniscience), so our draw spell is the last card in hand.
From there, the cheapest way I know to replay it is using Perpetual Timepiece, Mirror of Fate, to get it back in the graveyard, then Spellweaver Volute and any Sorcery. After that, we still need to draw the same 4 cards again to replay it, so we'll never be able to /profit/ card draws that way. With Skeins, we get 2 extra unaccounted-for draws.
One other reason to stick with Muzzio, too: with the Metallurgeon plan, we no longer have a way to replay Omniscience after the megastage transition! No blue mana.
Hmm... if we replace Consecrated Sphinx with Thousand-Year Storm, the second Words of Wisdom will let us draw six cards. We can draw Mirror of Fate, Perpetual Timepiece, Spellweaver Volute, a sorcery, Consecrated Sphinx, and another card. (possibly another instant or sorcery) That gives us five or six instances of Words of Wisdom on the stack, the first of which draws four cards; we can start working on increasing the number of Consecrated Sphinxes on the battlefield, although at some point we need to figure out how to get another casting of Words of Wisdom. With at least 24 draws incoming if need be, I'm confident we can figure out a way.
So, I was looking back at some of our old work, and we had a failed token hyperstage that used Champion-Changelings to flicker Goblin Dark-Dwellers, giving us the ability to use creatures that target with very strict restrictions. The problem was they all went infinite by sacrificing your changeling to its own champion triggers, since it gets so many with Panharmonicon. But, if we cut it all together, we don't have to worry about that! We can just repeatedly bounce the changeling with a different Psychic Battle trigger, and cast a different instant with Dark-Dwellers each time. The only thing we use Panharmonicon for besides that anyway is to put multiple spells on Spellweaver Helix, but we can just add a third Spider Spawning instead.
Then I was looking through the options for super restrictive cards, and I realized something else: if we have the creature be able to target itself, we can just use Engineered Explosives to kill it, and still bank up tokens as usual!
You just do this: start by building the full hyperstage stack normally. Any time you're about to run out of Psychic Battle triggers, use the second-to-last one to bounce our hyperstage creature (let's say, Anaba Ancestor. Bounce explosives after that like usual, by bouncing the let's say Changeling Hero and getting back Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Then, with n Anaba Ancestor tokens, where n can be zero, play the nontoken for Bloodbond March triggers, then activate each Anaba Ancestor token on top of that to build a mini-stage, with Bloodbond March triggers at the top. Resolve the first trigger to get Ancestor back, then play and crack Engineered Explosives for 2, destroying all the tokens and imprinting Anaba Ancestor. BUT, we now have n copies of Anaba Ancestor Psychic Battle triggers over Anaba Ancestor Bloodbond March triggers, which recreates the exact number of them we're supposed to generate!
That gives us what I think is the smallest token hyperstage yet:
Going back to Metallurgeon here because that way, we don't have blue mana to replay Omniscience after the megastage transition, so the only way to save it through there is to champion it under Changeling Hero, so it returns after the Child trigger. Otherwise, we can champion Vedalken Orrery and get it back in the middle of the megastage transition, which I'm pretty sure we can't allow under any circumstances. This also frees up both humans and fliers as options for later stages.
There's a ways to go before we can incorporate this into the current deck. For one thing, I don't yet have any idea how to use up the explosives copies we can save after a megastage. But if we can solve that, I think it's plausible we could get as many as seven or eight stages out of here, especially if we can replace Verdant Succession in the megastage.
Very interesting! I haven't quite gotten to grips with the new plan, but it looks quite promising. Traditionally, we have made sure that Rebuild and Battle Cry were tied together, because if you cast them separately, you had to worry about forgoing the casting of one Battle Cry to get an extra casting of Rebuild, and profit one hyperstage resource. But, I guess the idea here is that we get a stack of Psychic Battle triggers with no way to get Vedalken Orrery back in between, so we can only get one Engineered Explosives back per batch of Psychic Battle triggers. Makes sense.
But yeah, figuring out how to soak up those extra Engineered Explosives has always been the hardest part of making this deck. Here's an idea: make it so Changeling Hero has to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers to survive destruction by Child of Alara. We can either figure out another way to get back Omniscience (maybe by going back to blue mana), or add a second Changeling Hero so we can Champion both cards. That means we can't use Smite the Monstrous since we could use it to bring Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to our hand. But then, what would the benefit instant in the megastage transition be? We can't bounce Dark-Dwellers, so we would need some other way to create lots of Anaba Ancestor tokens. I don't know what that would be. Also, that still leaves Engineered Explosives itself, which we can't stop from being able to return to our hand in the higher hyperstage.
Edit: Sigh... it looks like having a hyperstage creature that can tap to target itself along with bringing back Engineered Explosives to gain another token goes infinite. Let's say we play Anaba Ancestor, getting a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. We play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives, destroying Anaba Ancestor and gaining a token copy. Bring back Anaba Ancestor with a Bloodbond March trigger. Bounce Vedalken Orrery, and put a Vedalken Orrery Mirrorworks trigger on the stack. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy the original Anaba Ancestor, creating another hasted token. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers from exile. This allows us to cast Rebuild, which brings Engineered Explosives back to our hand after we bring it back to the battlefield with Salvaging Station. Resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger for Anaba Ancestor (getting a Vedalken Orrery token in the meantime), and bring it back from the graveyard. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, then use one to bounce the original Ancestor. Replay it for a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. So we have another set of PB and BM layers. Now we can replay and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and create another token, and we can repeat the process, but each time get another set of layes. So this looks infinite.
The only hope I think is that I haven't accounted for Metallurgeon tokens to do the artifact bouncing that we need to do... We keep casting Rebuild, which clears out our artifacts. So maybe that saves us; I need to analyze that next.
Anyway, even if we lose out on Anaba Ancestor, we can still use Changeling Hero to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So we can use some low CMC creature that can tap to target some creature type other than itself. I've forgotten the good candidates for that... Dwarven Pony? Then we need to find a way to bring it back after getting destroyed by Engineered Explosives. We could always still use Skyshroud Archer, along with say Winged Sliver, although that moots flying creatures.
Edit: Hmmm, I just remembered that we need we can't use just the creature that gets exploded, because we can't accumulate tokens for them. (unless it is a self-targeting creature, but I believe that goes infinite) So we need another creature. One possibility is to use Skyshroud Archer, and target Coastal Drake. That makes us want to use Muzzio even more, since Coastal Drake uses blue mana. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to target Muzzio in the new setup - the only way I see to target it is to give Humans flying again, and then the deck is much the same as the previous one.
Ohhhh, that is annoying. So it looks like if we start with the Ancestor in hand, we can build a loop I didn't see. Yikes.
One maybe relevant thing here is that with [c]Metallurgeon[\c], killing Anaba Ancestor with Explosives also kills all Metallurgeons. You have to resolve back down the stack some to get them back, which, combined with the fact that it can't target Metallurgeon like our old versions, might stop that infinite.
If we switch to Coastal Drake, at a negligible loss of efficiency, we can do this:
Tap it to get N battle triggers. Use one to bounce Hero, getting back Dark-Dwellers, use it to get back Goryo's Vengeance, activate Muzzio to get a token (or bounce the nontoken, I guess). Replay Hero, champion Muzzio, and use Mirror/Timepiece to put it back in graveyard. Next Battle trigger bounces Hero, and we replay it to exile Dark-Dwellers. Repeat, and we profit a Rust Tick token. So we wind up turning n Battle triggers into N/4 Rust Ticks.
The problem then is that, with blue Mana, we can champion Orrery under it before resolving Child of Alara's death trigger, hardcast Omniscience, and go to town. So I'm not sure how to make it work after that.
Ah, that's a nice combo to use Muzzio!. Looks like that's back on the table.
The idea I had for avoiding Championing Vedalken Orrery was to make Championing Goblin Dark-Dwellers necessary to keep it from getting lost to the graveyard. That has the added effect of keeping Dark-Dwellers out of our hand after a megastage/gigastage transition, so we don't get to use it for an extra Explosives.
Yeah, that definitely seems like the most convenient way. I'm just unsure of how best to do it. Clearly, we need to switch up how we do the megastage, but finding a card that can hit Child but not Dwellers or Safeguard seems challenging. Presumably we want to give it flying, but since WotC somehow hasn't printed a card that gives legends flying, I'm not sure how to distinguish it. Is it time to move past Safeguard?
One other problem: since all Coastal Drakes inherently have flying, Scattershot Archer can't be used anymore, so we'll need a new way to regenerate the token.
In other news, I think I've found a new way of getting around the Battle stacking problem: Tajuru Archer and Beastcaller Savant. If we start with Moggcatcher in hand, we can crack Explosives for 2, killing Savant and getting Succession triggers. Then, above the succession triggers, we can play Moggcatcher, make a Mimic Vat token of Savant and use the Archer's ability to kill Moggcatcher and get a token, and use the Succession trigger tutoring out the nontoken to bounce our hyperstage creature again. Crucially, since we can only use the Vat one before fetching it back with Succession, there's no way to get two tokens out of the two ETB triggers.
Sadly, it won't work with the new version because Changelings are also Allies, but it will shave a few slots off the old version if we can't make this one work.
I'm a little confused; I picked Coastal Drake _because_ it had flying, so that it could be targeted by Skyshroud Archer or Scattershot Archer. Is that a problem? If it is, there are certainly creatures that can target Changeling Hero that don't have flying.
Looking at the old version, I had an idea that we could go back to Skyshroud Archer if we used Muzzio, since I didn't see a way to go infinite by targeting it; if it doesn't, then we can go:
Room for a seven card ending sequence, not bad. Thousand-Year Storm gives us two layers for every instant/sorcery, so Sphinx's Revelation is quite efficient.
I'm not sure how to save foor with Tajuru Archer and Beastcaller Savant; did the old version have a Battle stacking problem?
It is for Scattershot, which deals damage globally instead of targeting. There's a longrunning issue of running into infinites, including with Skyshroud Archer, where we use the first one to bounce Moggcatcher, replay it and use the second token to make a Moggcatcher token, then go off in response to the remaining Psychic Battle triggers in the first batch, so on the second run, you can make two Moggcatchers. The above deck is a perfect example: you can save Metallurgeons by "storing" them on the stack above the Psychic Battle triggers on the first archer, and easily profit several Moggcatchers before you're done.
I think Lys Alana Bowmaster and Wirewood Herald could also work as replacements: that way, you can kill one to get back the other post-megastage. It costs a Consecrated Sphinx, but ultimately no biggie in that deck.
Good catch with Sphinx's Revelation, by the way! That should get us up to... f_{w^4+w5+5}(n), where n is the number of World at Wars we cast, which is itself f_{w^4+w5+4}(*), where * is the number of Druid's Repositorys we created before the first combat, which is equal to f_{w^4+w5+1}(?), where ? is equal to the number of Words of Wisdom... call it 20? 25?
Yeah, probably 25-30. (We can mill some cards to avoid drawing them.)
Ah, I see the problem with bouncing and destroying Moggcatcher. Nice ideas on how to fix it. I think Scattershot Archer could avoid that problem, if it is coupled with a way to bring Moggcatcher back from the graveyard; then there is no need to bounce it for Bloodbond March triggers, so it is just a matter of balancing created and used Moggcatchers.
Before I saw your post, I made a deck with Changeling Hero. I guess the Skyshroud Archer bit doesn't quite work, but perhaps it is close:
Yeah, that deck is close, but not quite there: one Archer is enough to either bounce Drake or kill it, but not both. That's proving to be tricky to manage.
Very nice stage sequence! A few notes: I'm not sure how we're getting back Nylea's Disciple after a Worldfire. I assume we want to champion it under the Changeling at that point, but then we need a way to get back Dark-Dwellers. We need Copy Enchantment to make Volute copies. Also, I believe Arixmethes actually goes infinite: we can turn it into a creature, use spare life to go through megastages without the transition and use Brace for Impact to kill it, make a token copy that will still be a land, and reanimate it, and go infinite once we have enough that Disciple gains more than 3 life each time it dies. We can switch to any green God, which can't be copied since we can't kill it and put it on a Vat. Karametra, God of Harvests is so close to saving a card by getting back Bayou, but since it comes in tapped, we can just use Pharika, God of Affliction.
Actually, to get back Nylea, I think Natural Order is safe! Now that we've split Helixes, the spells have to resolve in discrete batches: if we cast Natural Order first, we have to resolve all its copies, and any triggers from casting it, before the first Worldfire goes on the stack. If it's our only way to gain life, we have to put it above Worldfire, so we can't fetch Disciple before that. Then, after Worldfire resolves, Disciple is off the board, and we have to re-enter the next gigastage to get it back.
Yeah, Skyshroud Archer is a problem since if we add another Archer, we can get 2 Coastal Drakes per Engineered Explosives by feeding off the same Bloodbond March set of triggers. So, I would like to use Scattershot Archer, along with something to bring back Coastal Drake. Obviously something that would bring back fliers would be nice, but I don't know of any such cards. The only thing I can think of is adding another Coastal Drake and Assembly Hall. This messes up Nylea's Disciple, since we have two of those. But, what do have Goblin Dark-Dwellers entering the battlefield after the Child of Alara trigger, so we could use that opportunity to bring Nylea's Disciple to the library so that it can be brought back by Verdant Succession. We only want to bring one creature back though, since if we can bring back more then we can bring back Scattershot Archer to boost our devotion. So no Bone Harvest; Reclaim seems good.
After all the changes, we end up using five more cards, reducing us to four stages:
So, worse than the older version. The extra five cards can be entirely attributed to replacing Smite the Monstrous with Brace for Impact; that requires adding another instant, which in turn requires adding Copy Enchantment. Also, we lose Centaur Safeguard, which means adding another card to set up Nylea's Discple, and also Natural Order and Spider Spawning. So finding a replacement for Brace for Impact would be great, but I don't have any ideas at the moment.
There's another problem: we can't use Nylea's Disciple at all here. We can just champion it under the hero and gain life infinitely.
Scattershot won't work, because it deals damage to all creatures with flying: it will kill the tokens we accumulate, too. In the past, we used the occlusion of Dearly Departed and Abzan Falconer to make it so only the nontoken had flying, but we can't do that here.
If we can get Natural Order working, though, even with Centaur Safeguard, we can use it as our lifegain spell: it can get replace Succession to give us extra life. So that saves two slots, one for Congregation and one for the fourth Spawning.
One interesting thing: if, by some miracle, we could get the Disciple plan working, if we cut Pharika, we could go back to Smite, and make it so we have to champion Dwellers so that, that way, we can Goryo's Vengeance back Child to give us the third devotion. That's a long shot, though.
I thought about using Natural Order to gain lots of life, but I ran into problems trying to do so. We can sacrifice one green creature when we cast it, after than we need ways to get Nylea's Disciple from the battlefield to the library. Child of Alara could do it, so we could certainly gain lots of life by repeatedly destroying Child of Alara, moving Nylea's Disciple to the library with Reclaim, and bringing it back with a copy of Natural Order. But, destroying Child of Alara kills of Vedalken Orrery, which eliminates our ability to take advantage of our newly gained life before Worldfire resolves. So I don't know how to make it work.
Another problem in the Moggcatcher deck: While we do gain one Moggcatcher token per destruction of Wirewood Herald, each Moggcatcher allows to use Goblin Dark-Dwellers twice, once when we bring back the original, and another time when we create a Mimic Vat token after we sacrifice the original.
That way, we are either in an Ancestor or Tick configuration, and any time we are in one and want to get Bloodbond March triggers for the other, we have to resolve a Rebuild first. Then, in the megastage transition, we need it set to 4 for Acorn Harvest... I haven't done anywhere close to a confirmation, but if it does work as well as possible, that would save a ton of cards again.
For Natural Order, if you play 2 Safeguards, you can use it to tutor out both, pay 3 life into a Child megastage to gain 6, then use the next Natural Order down to tutor both out. If you're going Disciple, you only need it to enter the battlefield once to gain n life, because each Bloodbond March gives you 1 more devotion and 1 more life.
Very interesting idea! At first glance, I'm not seeing anywhere where we need to switch from Anaba Ancestor to Rust Tick without going through a Rebuild, so I don't see yet how it can resolve the Anaba Ancestor issue. Still, Chalice of the Void has some interesting potential to possibly stop infinites, so it's something to keep in mind.
Edit: Okay, let me try and analyze the Anaba Ancestor situation again. First thing I just noticed, after Rebuild resolves, we can get one Mirrorworks artifact, and therefore two each of Mimic Vat, Mirror of Fate, and Perpetual Timepiece before we ever encounter another Psychic Battle trigger for Rust Tick again. So, we won't be able to do what we originally wanted, which was to build a ministage of Anaba Ancestors, while casting Rebuilds from the top, because we will run out of necessary artifacts. To make it work, we need to sprinkle in Rust Tick Psychic Battle triggers amidst all the Anaba Ancestor triggers.
Perhaps the way we want to do things is like so - set up the stack as:
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
...
...
So, after we resolve out the highest stage, we resolve the hyperstage transition, casting Rebuild and bringing Engineered Explosives back to out hand along with all our other artifacts. We put a Vedalken Orrery trigger at the bottom of the hyperstage transition, so we get a token coming into play. We have enough artifacts to do our usual thing with the Anaba Ancestor stage; use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy Anaba Ancestor, imprint it on a Mimic Vat, use Mirror of Fate to bring it back to the library, and Perpetual Timepeice to put it back in the graveyard. We still have Bloodbond March triggers, but we are out of Mirror of Fates, so we are forced to resolve down to the Psychic Battle triggers for Rust Tick to create some needed artifacts, and also a hasted Rust Tick token. After we get the required amount, we can tap our newly created Anaba Ancestor token to get a batch of Psychic Battle triggers, use one to bounce Anaba Ancestor, and create a batch of Bloodbond March triggers. Next, we play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and gain the token back. Tap the token to get a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, and after we have prepared for the hyperstage transition, use the top Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, and we can get started with the hyperstage transtion.
So the top of our stack looks like this:
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for AA
(smaller stack of) PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
...
After we resolve again, the top three batches generate one token, but now Anaba Ancestor goes back to our hand. So, after getting the necessary artifacts and the hasted Rust Tick token, we can play the Anaba Ancestor nontoken, getting a bunch of BM triggers, tap the hasted token to get a bunch of PB triggers, then bounce the nontoken and get another bunch of BM triggers. Sacrifice Explosives to kill of Anaba Ancestor, getting another token, resolve out the BM triggers to get down to the PB layer below. Now enter the hyperstage transition, but this time with an Anaba Ancestor hasted token on the battlefield. I think at this point there is nothing stopping us from creating another stage with an Anaba Ancestor set of layers on top, so we can create another stage on top of that. So this looks infinite.
Okay, how about with Chalice of the Void? With this setup, after the hyperstage transition we can replay Chalice of the Void for 2. This allows us to get Bloodbond March triggers for Anaba Ancestor, but not for Rust Tick. But, we didn't need to replay Rust Tick for Bloodbond March triggers, provided we had a healthy stack of Psychic Battle triggers at the top of the Rust Tick part of the stack. After a couple of transitions we can create another two stages above, and don't need to resolve down to this stage again. So this is looking infinite.
So, this looks like bad news.
Edit: Hmm, what if we switch to Metallurgeon? Then, if we do things exactly the same, then, after we sacrifice the Explosives, we destroy all our Metallurgeons, and we can't go into the higher stage and gain any benefit from it. What we can do is double dip - we first resolve down to the Metallurgeon stack to get the Psychic Battle triggers necessary for the artifacts to keep going, then we build the Anaba Ancestor stack back up, and sacrifice the Explosives. We then resolve back down again to generate our Metallurgeon tokens. But, each time we resolve down, we lose half a step in our Anaba Ancestor stack, so after double dipping we have lost a token's worth of the stack. So this exactly compensates for the extra token from Engineered Explosives! Do we have the winning ticket here?
Edit: With the hope that the above is correct, I tried to make a deck:
Sadly, that doesn't work either. With Metallurgeon, we can bank up token copies by creating a mini-stage above each Bloodbond March layer for Ancestor, and use those to get our Metallurgeons back after explosives.
There are a few other issues too: with 2x Changeling Hero, we can bounce both, replay one to champion Dwellers, put our necessary preprocessing on the stack, then play the second, champion the first, and cast Rebuild with the Dwellers. And we can just use the Changeling to blink Tireless Missionaries as needed, so that won't work in the megastage. We also have to be careful to make sure we always need a hasty artifact token to continue in the middle: we can champion Vedalken Orrery under a changeling, which is an issue. I still think it's possible, but we have a ways to go.
We can still kick start the combo this way, by using Tribal Unity to pump Xathrid Gorgon so its power is 4 or greater. Then, when we cast it later, each individual copy from Thousand-Year Storm can pump the power of all out Old Man of the Sea tokens so that they can target the Gorgon. We build a "stage" of Old Men targeting the Gorgon, and turn one copy of the spell resolving into n Gorgons. That should add an extra layer over Reality Spasm.
I also found a possible avenue for a sixth stage in that deck, assuming Muzzio stays safe, based on white Mana: Sea Snidd. I'm not sure how to turn a white Mana into a copy of it and targeting of Old Man of the Sea, but it seems at least plausible as an option.
Oof, lots of problems then. Nice improvement with Tribal Unity.
Though, I'm wondering now if being able to target Muzzio, Visionary Architect does in fact go infinite. My earlier reasoning was that we have to give up creating a hasted Muzzio token in order to get one later by targeting the nontoken. But, that can still help, provided you give up a token in the higher hyperstage to create one in the lower hyperstage. So I'm thinking we can go infinite there.
Of course, Metallurgeon has the same problem with being able to be targeted. But, when we destroy Wirewood Herald, we also destroy all Metallurgeons - can that save us?
I'm not sure I follow that infinite... Don't we still need a hasty token to do anything with it at all?
As for the Herald, as I've thought more about it, I'm not sure it's possible to go infinite with it in any way, at least not by banking up Battle triggers. Once you cast it to trigger Bowmaster, the Battle triggers go on top of the Cephalid Shrine trigger. There is no way to even get the card off the stack before all the battles have resolved!
So, ignoring that possible infinite, we're left with something like this.
We can use Natural Order as the lifegain spell here because this time, we can use it to tutor out both Safeguards, use the 3 life gained from sacrificing one to play out a megastage, this time gaining 6 life because both Safeguards were out, then use the next Natural Orders down to get both back. So that's good for six layers and five stages over the top. Plus, if we can find any way to turn a white Mana into targeting of nonblack creatures, we could plausibly add a sixth stage.
Assuming, of course there's a way around that infinite. If not, we can go back to Battle Cry.
Wait, how does Wirewood Herald and Lys Alana Bowmaster handle both the destruction and retrieval of Moggcatcher? Each time we destroy Wirewood Herald, we get to retrieve Wirewood Herald once, and that allows us to cast it once, getting one batch of targetings of Moggcatcher.
We do need a hasted token of Rust Tick to do anything artifact-wise, so we do need to dip into Psychic Battle triggers wherever those are on the stack. The potential problem is that we can use a PB trigger to destory the nontoken Rust Tick, create a Rust Tick token, tap the hasted Muzzio to retrieve the nontoken Rust Tick, target it with the next PB trigger, and create another Rust Tick token. I haven't gone into a deep analysis but it looks infinite.
I have to think more about whether Metallurgeon can go infinite.
Assuming we can make it all work, I wonder about the possibility of removing Verdant Succession and Natural Order to free up green creatures - without Possessed Centaur I don't know how to do 6 stages in less than 10 cards, so we would need to make the change without adding any more cards. Something to think about.
Also, with Scattershot Archer instead of target fliers/Humans, that would free up Humans anc fliers to be used as transition creatures, or possibly in mana stages... not sure what we can make of that.
You get it via Mimic Vat. You use the first explosives to bounce Moggcatcher, then put Dwellers on a Vat, use it to Rebuild again, and use the second explosives to kill Moggcatcher, getting it back.
Then, in the megastage, you use up your explosives like so: crack the first one to kill Herald, searching out Bowmaster, and make a token copy of Herald with vat. Play Dark-Dwellers, crack Explosives again with the Rebuild, and that lets you kill the token Herald to get the nontoken. Play Moggcatcher, play Herald, and get a hasty Moggcatcher. But, we can't use it yet, because Dark-Dwellers is now on the battlefield so we can't tutor it out with the ability. We have to use the ability to get back Goblin Turncoat. Then, we can use the Turncoat to put Dwellers on the Vat and get a new hyperstage, but we need the explosives from it to kill Herald, giving us the Succession triggers for it that we need to keep going with the combo. So that feels pretty solid to me.
And oof. Yeah, that looks like an infinite all right. I think Metallurgeon should save us then, because even though we can generate March triggers with Rebuild, and we can use Battle triggers to kill it and regenerate the same triggers, we can't do them in the right order. The problem then is, we need a new way to save Omniscience through the megastage transition. I know Flash isn't a safe starting tool, but I wonder if there's some other way to use Academy Rector as the setup, because then it could do double duty.
Oh right, we can use Mimic Vat to get two uses of Engineered Explosives. But, don't we run into the danger of using both Explosives to kill Moggcatcher? We just need to bounce Moggcatcher once to create a bank of Bloodbond March triggers.
I'm thinking that Metallurgeon still goes infinite. We can use our Metallurgeon tokens to create a stage, with Bloodbond March triggers on the top. We can then crack an Explosives to destroy both Wirewood Herald and Metallurgeon, creating tokens of both. We use the Wirewood Herald trigger to return it to our hand, and then resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return Metallurgeon to the battlefield. Use the Metallurgeon token to extend the stage by a couple layers. Cast the Herald to bounce Moggcatcher, sacrifice Goblin Dark-Dwellers, creating a token copy, make the hyperstage transition, get Explosives back with Rebuild, and sacrifice it again to destroy Herald and Metallurgeon again. Create a couple more layers of the Metallurgeon stage, play Moggcatcher for Bloodbond March triggers and destroy it with the Herald, and create a Moggcatcher token. Tap the token to bring back Dark-Dwellers, and get Explosives back, going back to where we started, but with four more layers in the Metallurgeon stage.
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Oh right, we did do a sideboard version. It's something we can think about - we definitely want to get rid of Verdant Succession and Woodland Bellower for that, and perhaps also switch from Smite the Monstrous back to Gloomwidow's Feast and [c]Brace for Impact[/]? That would free up both green creatures and power > 3 creatures, we could conceivably make quite a long stage sequence...
The Brace for Impact plan probably doesn't work anymore, since it can also target and destroy Centaur Safeguard. I'm also not sure what the best 60-card list right now looks like, and we should probably confirm we can still get started all right with Thousand-Year Storm: we'll wind up with a lot fewer copies than we had with Precursor.
On a similar note, I know that Words of Wisdom isn't feasible, but I think it's at least plausible we could go off with Vision Skeins. With one sphinx out, it draws 6, not 4, and getting it back from exile into the graveyard to repeatedly cast with Dark-Dwellers or Spellweaver Volute is vastly easier now that we've left Guildmage behind.
From there, we can play either Vision Skeins or Words of Wisdom. Either one draws us 2 cards, just enough for Consecrated Sphinx and Goblin Dark-Dwellers. That draws us either 4 or 6, at which point our spell is in exile.
From there, the cheapest way I know to replay it is using Perpetual Timepiece, Mirror of Fate, to get it back in the graveyard, then Spellweaver Volute and any Sorcery. After that, we still need to draw the same 4 cards again to replay it, so we'll never be able to /profit/ card draws that way. With Skeins, we get 2 extra unaccounted-for draws.
One other reason to stick with Muzzio, too: with the Metallurgeon plan, we no longer have a way to replay Omniscience after the megastage transition! No blue mana.
Then I was looking through the options for super restrictive cards, and I realized something else: if we have the creature be able to target itself, we can just use Engineered Explosives to kill it, and still bank up tokens as usual!
You just do this: start by building the full hyperstage stack normally. Any time you're about to run out of Psychic Battle triggers, use the second-to-last one to bounce our hyperstage creature (let's say, Anaba Ancestor. Bounce explosives after that like usual, by bouncing the let's say Changeling Hero and getting back Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Then, with n Anaba Ancestor tokens, where n can be zero, play the nontoken for Bloodbond March triggers, then activate each Anaba Ancestor token on top of that to build a mini-stage, with Bloodbond March triggers at the top. Resolve the first trigger to get Ancestor back, then play and crack Engineered Explosives for 2, destroying all the tokens and imprinting Anaba Ancestor. BUT, we now have n copies of Anaba Ancestor Psychic Battle triggers over Anaba Ancestor Bloodbond March triggers, which recreates the exact number of them we're supposed to generate!
That gives us what I think is the smallest token hyperstage yet:
Going back to Metallurgeon here because that way, we don't have blue mana to replay Omniscience after the megastage transition, so the only way to save it through there is to champion it under Changeling Hero, so it returns after the Child trigger. Otherwise, we can champion Vedalken Orrery and get it back in the middle of the megastage transition, which I'm pretty sure we can't allow under any circumstances. This also frees up both humans and fliers as options for later stages.
There's a ways to go before we can incorporate this into the current deck. For one thing, I don't yet have any idea how to use up the explosives copies we can save after a megastage. But if we can solve that, I think it's plausible we could get as many as seven or eight stages out of here, especially if we can replace Verdant Succession in the megastage.
But yeah, figuring out how to soak up those extra Engineered Explosives has always been the hardest part of making this deck. Here's an idea: make it so Changeling Hero has to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers to survive destruction by Child of Alara. We can either figure out another way to get back Omniscience (maybe by going back to blue mana), or add a second Changeling Hero so we can Champion both cards. That means we can't use Smite the Monstrous since we could use it to bring Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to our hand. But then, what would the benefit instant in the megastage transition be? We can't bounce Dark-Dwellers, so we would need some other way to create lots of Anaba Ancestor tokens. I don't know what that would be. Also, that still leaves Engineered Explosives itself, which we can't stop from being able to return to our hand in the higher hyperstage.
Edit: Continuing with the above idea, we could bounce Changeling Hero in the megastage transition rather than Goblin Dark-Dwellers. I don't know any instant with CMC 4 or higher that targets a particular creature type, but we could go with say Winged Sliver and Gloomwidow's Feast. We would need another way to target Child of Alara of course, with Brace for Impact (or Maze Glider) being the obvious way, which eliminates Centaur Safeguard.
Edit: Or maybe just Into Thin Air, to bounce Engineered Explosives directly.
Edit: Sigh... it looks like having a hyperstage creature that can tap to target itself along with bringing back Engineered Explosives to gain another token goes infinite. Let's say we play Anaba Ancestor, getting a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. We play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives, destroying Anaba Ancestor and gaining a token copy. Bring back Anaba Ancestor with a Bloodbond March trigger. Bounce Vedalken Orrery, and put a Vedalken Orrery Mirrorworks trigger on the stack. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy the original Anaba Ancestor, creating another hasted token. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers from exile. This allows us to cast Rebuild, which brings Engineered Explosives back to our hand after we bring it back to the battlefield with Salvaging Station. Resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger for Anaba Ancestor (getting a Vedalken Orrery token in the meantime), and bring it back from the graveyard. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, then use one to bounce the original Ancestor. Replay it for a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. So we have another set of PB and BM layers. Now we can replay and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and create another token, and we can repeat the process, but each time get another set of layes. So this looks infinite.
The only hope I think is that I haven't accounted for Metallurgeon tokens to do the artifact bouncing that we need to do... We keep casting Rebuild, which clears out our artifacts. So maybe that saves us; I need to analyze that next.
Anyway, even if we lose out on Anaba Ancestor, we can still use Changeling Hero to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So we can use some low CMC creature that can tap to target some creature type other than itself. I've forgotten the good candidates for that... Dwarven Pony? Then we need to find a way to bring it back after getting destroyed by Engineered Explosives. We could always still use Skyshroud Archer, along with say Winged Sliver, although that moots flying creatures.
Edit: Other good possibilities for creature type targeters are Kitsune Diviner, Goblin Digging Team, King Suleiman, and Otepec Huntmaster.
Edit: Hmmm, I just remembered that we need we can't use just the creature that gets exploded, because we can't accumulate tokens for them. (unless it is a self-targeting creature, but I believe that goes infinite) So we need another creature. One possibility is to use Skyshroud Archer, and target Coastal Drake. That makes us want to use Muzzio even more, since Coastal Drake uses blue mana. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to target Muzzio in the new setup - the only way I see to target it is to give Humans flying again, and then the deck is much the same as the previous one.
One maybe relevant thing here is that with [c]Metallurgeon[\c], killing Anaba Ancestor with Explosives also kills all Metallurgeons. You have to resolve back down the stack some to get them back, which, combined with the fact that it can't target Metallurgeon like our old versions, might stop that infinite.
If we switch to Coastal Drake, at a negligible loss of efficiency, we can do this:
Tap it to get N battle triggers. Use one to bounce Hero, getting back Dark-Dwellers, use it to get back Goryo's Vengeance, activate Muzzio to get a token (or bounce the nontoken, I guess). Replay Hero, champion Muzzio, and use Mirror/Timepiece to put it back in graveyard. Next Battle trigger bounces Hero, and we replay it to exile Dark-Dwellers. Repeat, and we profit a Rust Tick token. So we wind up turning n Battle triggers into N/4 Rust Ticks.
The problem then is that, with blue Mana, we can champion Orrery under it before resolving Child of Alara's death trigger, hardcast Omniscience, and go to town. So I'm not sure how to make it work after that.
The idea I had for avoiding Championing Vedalken Orrery was to make Championing Goblin Dark-Dwellers necessary to keep it from getting lost to the graveyard. That has the added effect of keeping Dark-Dwellers out of our hand after a megastage/gigastage transition, so we don't get to use it for an extra Explosives.
One other problem: since all Coastal Drakes inherently have flying, Scattershot Archer can't be used anymore, so we'll need a new way to regenerate the token.
In other news, I think I've found a new way of getting around the Battle stacking problem: Tajuru Archer and Beastcaller Savant. If we start with Moggcatcher in hand, we can crack Explosives for 2, killing Savant and getting Succession triggers. Then, above the succession triggers, we can play Moggcatcher, make a Mimic Vat token of Savant and use the Archer's ability to kill Moggcatcher and get a token, and use the Succession trigger tutoring out the nontoken to bounce our hyperstage creature again. Crucially, since we can only use the Vat one before fetching it back with Succession, there's no way to get two tokens out of the two ETB triggers.
Sadly, it won't work with the new version because Changelings are also Allies, but it will shave a few slots off the old version if we can't make this one work.
Looking at the old version, I had an idea that we could go back to Skyshroud Archer if we used Muzzio, since I didn't see a way to go infinite by targeting it; if it doesn't, then we can go:
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
20 Goryo's Vengeance
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Moggcatcher
24 Goblin Turncoat
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Verdant Succession
29 Dearly Departed
30 Abzan Falconer
32 Acorn Harvest
33 Smite the Monstrous
34 Child of Alara
35 Centaur Safeguard
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Titania, Protector of Argoth
41 Archangel's Light
42 Woodland Bellower
43 Bayou
44 Eureka
45 Mox Emerald
46 Polluted Dead
47 Frightshroud Courier
48 Simian Spirit Guide
49 Goblin Kites
50 Wilderness Hypnotist
51 Steambed Aquitects
53 Xathrid Gorgon
54 Reality Spasm
55 Thousand-Year Storm
56 Sphinx's Revelation
57 Druids' Repository
58 World at War
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
Room for a seven card ending sequence, not bad. Thousand-Year Storm gives us two layers for every instant/sorcery, so Sphinx's Revelation is quite efficient.
I'm not sure how to save foor with Tajuru Archer and Beastcaller Savant; did the old version have a Battle stacking problem?
I think Lys Alana Bowmaster and Wirewood Herald could also work as replacements: that way, you can kill one to get back the other post-megastage. It costs a Consecrated Sphinx, but ultimately no biggie in that deck.
Good catch with Sphinx's Revelation, by the way! That should get us up to... f_{w^4+w5+5}(n), where n is the number of World at Wars we cast, which is itself f_{w^4+w5+4}(*), where * is the number of Druid's Repositorys we created before the first combat, which is equal to f_{w^4+w5+1}(?), where ? is equal to the number of Words of Wisdom... call it 20? 25?
Ah, I see the problem with bouncing and destroying Moggcatcher. Nice ideas on how to fix it. I think Scattershot Archer could avoid that problem, if it is coupled with a way to bring Moggcatcher back from the graveyard; then there is no need to bounce it for Bloodbond March triggers, so it is just a matter of balancing created and used Moggcatchers.
Before I saw your post, I made a deck with Changeling Hero. I guess the Skyshroud Archer bit doesn't quite work, but perhaps it is close:
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
20 Goryo's Vengeance
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Changeling Hero
24 Coastal Drake
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Skyshroud Archer
27 Verdant Succession
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Into Thin Air
31 Brace for Impact
32 Child of Alara
33 Nylea's Disciple
34 Nylea's Disciple
35 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Titania, Protector of Argoth
42 Archangel's Light
43 Bayou
44 Eureka
45 Mox Emerald
46 Goblin Gardener
47 Mad Auntie
49 Frightshroud Courier
50 Slayer of the Wicked
51 Grassland Crusader
52 Dwarven Warriors
53 Possessed Barbarian
54 Minion of Tevesh Szat
55 Mana Crypt
56 Reality Spasm
57 Thousand-Year Storm
58 Military Intelligence
59 World at War
60 Words of Wisdom
Perhaps seven stages should be possible, but I didn't see a way. We will probably need the spare card slots anyway.
Very nice stage sequence! A few notes: I'm not sure how we're getting back Nylea's Disciple after a Worldfire. I assume we want to champion it under the Changeling at that point, but then we need a way to get back Dark-Dwellers. We need Copy Enchantment to make Volute copies. Also, I believe Arixmethes actually goes infinite: we can turn it into a creature, use spare life to go through megastages without the transition and use Brace for Impact to kill it, make a token copy that will still be a land, and reanimate it, and go infinite once we have enough that Disciple gains more than 3 life each time it dies. We can switch to any green God, which can't be copied since we can't kill it and put it on a Vat. Karametra, God of Harvests is so close to saving a card by getting back Bayou, but since it comes in tapped, we can just use Pharika, God of Affliction.
Actually, to get back Nylea, I think Natural Order is safe! Now that we've split Helixes, the spells have to resolve in discrete batches: if we cast Natural Order first, we have to resolve all its copies, and any triggers from casting it, before the first Worldfire goes on the stack. If it's our only way to gain life, we have to put it above Worldfire, so we can't fetch Disciple before that. Then, after Worldfire resolves, Disciple is off the board, and we have to re-enter the next gigastage to get it back.
Edit: a few other notes: I have a wizards->zombies stage of Havengul Runebinder and Ghosthelm Courier, which can then transition into humans via Devout Chaplain and Royal Assassin. I don't think it's as efficient as what you have, though!
After all the changes, we end up using five more cards, reducing us to four stages:
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
20 Goryo's Vengeance
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Changeling Hero
24 Coastal Drake
25 Coastal Drake
26 Assembly Hall
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Scattershot Archer
29 Verdant Succession
31 Copy Enchantment
32 Acorn Harvest
33 Into Thin Air
34 Brace for Impact
35 Child of Alara
36 Nylea's Disciple
37 Reclaim
38 Pharika, God of Affliction
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Spider Spawning
44 Spider Spawning
45 Natural Order
46 Titania, Protector of Argoth
47 Divine Congregation
48 Bayou
49 Eureka
50 Mox Emerald
52 Frightshroud Courier
53 Dwarven Warriors
54 Possessed Barbarian
55 Minion of Tevesh Szat
56 Mana Crypt
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
So, worse than the older version. The extra five cards can be entirely attributed to replacing Smite the Monstrous with Brace for Impact; that requires adding another instant, which in turn requires adding Copy Enchantment. Also, we lose Centaur Safeguard, which means adding another card to set up Nylea's Discple, and also Natural Order and Spider Spawning. So finding a replacement for Brace for Impact would be great, but I don't have any ideas at the moment.
Scattershot won't work, because it deals damage to all creatures with flying: it will kill the tokens we accumulate, too. In the past, we used the occlusion of Dearly Departed and Abzan Falconer to make it so only the nontoken had flying, but we can't do that here.
If we can get Natural Order working, though, even with Centaur Safeguard, we can use it as our lifegain spell: it can get replace Succession to give us extra life. So that saves two slots, one for Congregation and one for the fourth Spawning.
One interesting thing: if, by some miracle, we could get the Disciple plan working, if we cut Pharika, we could go back to Smite, and make it so we have to champion Dwellers so that, that way, we can Goryo's Vengeance back Child to give us the third devotion. That's a long shot, though.
I thought about using Natural Order to gain lots of life, but I ran into problems trying to do so. We can sacrifice one green creature when we cast it, after than we need ways to get Nylea's Disciple from the battlefield to the library. Child of Alara could do it, so we could certainly gain lots of life by repeatedly destroying Child of Alara, moving Nylea's Disciple to the library with Reclaim, and bringing it back with a copy of Natural Order. But, destroying Child of Alara kills of Vedalken Orrery, which eliminates our ability to take advantage of our newly gained life before Worldfire resolves. So I don't know how to make it work.
Another problem in the Moggcatcher deck: While we do gain one Moggcatcher token per destruction of Wirewood Herald, each Moggcatcher allows to use Goblin Dark-Dwellers twice, once when we bring back the original, and another time when we create a Mimic Vat token after we sacrifice the original.
That way, we are either in an Ancestor or Tick configuration, and any time we are in one and want to get Bloodbond March triggers for the other, we have to resolve a Rebuild first. Then, in the megastage transition, we need it set to 4 for Acorn Harvest... I haven't done anywhere close to a confirmation, but if it does work as well as possible, that would save a ton of cards again.
For Natural Order, if you play 2 Safeguards, you can use it to tutor out both, pay 3 life into a Child megastage to gain 6, then use the next Natural Order down to tutor both out. If you're going Disciple, you only need it to enter the battlefield once to gain n life, because each Bloodbond March gives you 1 more devotion and 1 more life.
Edit: Okay, let me try and analyze the Anaba Ancestor situation again. First thing I just noticed, after Rebuild resolves, we can get one Mirrorworks artifact, and therefore two each of Mimic Vat, Mirror of Fate, and Perpetual Timepiece before we ever encounter another Psychic Battle trigger for Rust Tick again. So, we won't be able to do what we originally wanted, which was to build a ministage of Anaba Ancestors, while casting Rebuilds from the top, because we will run out of necessary artifacts. To make it work, we need to sprinkle in Rust Tick Psychic Battle triggers amidst all the Anaba Ancestor triggers.
So first, I will analyze the combo without Chalice of the Void.
Perhaps the way we want to do things is like so - set up the stack as:
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
...
...
So, after we resolve out the highest stage, we resolve the hyperstage transition, casting Rebuild and bringing Engineered Explosives back to out hand along with all our other artifacts. We put a Vedalken Orrery trigger at the bottom of the hyperstage transition, so we get a token coming into play. We have enough artifacts to do our usual thing with the Anaba Ancestor stage; use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy Anaba Ancestor, imprint it on a Mimic Vat, use Mirror of Fate to bring it back to the library, and Perpetual Timepeice to put it back in the graveyard. We still have Bloodbond March triggers, but we are out of Mirror of Fates, so we are forced to resolve down to the Psychic Battle triggers for Rust Tick to create some needed artifacts, and also a hasted Rust Tick token. After we get the required amount, we can tap our newly created Anaba Ancestor token to get a batch of Psychic Battle triggers, use one to bounce Anaba Ancestor, and create a batch of Bloodbond March triggers. Next, we play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and gain the token back. Tap the token to get a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, and after we have prepared for the hyperstage transition, use the top Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, and we can get started with the hyperstage transtion.
So the top of our stack looks like this:
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
Hyperstage transition stuff
PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for AA
(smaller stack of) PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT
...
...
After we resolve again, the top three batches generate one token, but now Anaba Ancestor goes back to our hand. So, after getting the necessary artifacts and the hasted Rust Tick token, we can play the Anaba Ancestor nontoken, getting a bunch of BM triggers, tap the hasted token to get a bunch of PB triggers, then bounce the nontoken and get another bunch of BM triggers. Sacrifice Explosives to kill of Anaba Ancestor, getting another token, resolve out the BM triggers to get down to the PB layer below. Now enter the hyperstage transition, but this time with an Anaba Ancestor hasted token on the battlefield. I think at this point there is nothing stopping us from creating another stage with an Anaba Ancestor set of layers on top, so we can create another stage on top of that. So this looks infinite.
Okay, how about with Chalice of the Void? With this setup, after the hyperstage transition we can replay Chalice of the Void for 2. This allows us to get Bloodbond March triggers for Anaba Ancestor, but not for Rust Tick. But, we didn't need to replay Rust Tick for Bloodbond March triggers, provided we had a healthy stack of Psychic Battle triggers at the top of the Rust Tick part of the stack. After a couple of transitions we can create another two stages above, and don't need to resolve down to this stage again. So this is looking infinite.
So, this looks like bad news.
Edit: Hmm, what if we switch to Metallurgeon? Then, if we do things exactly the same, then, after we sacrifice the Explosives, we destroy all our Metallurgeons, and we can't go into the higher stage and gain any benefit from it. What we can do is double dip - we first resolve down to the Metallurgeon stack to get the Psychic Battle triggers necessary for the artifacts to keep going, then we build the Anaba Ancestor stack back up, and sacrifice the Explosives. We then resolve back down again to generate our Metallurgeon tokens. But, each time we resolve down, we lose half a step in our Anaba Ancestor stack, so after double dipping we have lost a token's worth of the stack. So this exactly compensates for the extra token from Engineered Explosives! Do we have the winning ticket here?
Edit: With the hope that the above is correct, I tried to make a deck:
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Selesnya Keyrune
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Changeling Hero
23 Changeling Hero
24 Anaba Ancestor
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Salvaging Station
28 Copy Enchantment
30 Acorn Harvest
31 Into Thin Air
32 Brace for Impact
33 Child of Alara
34 Tireless Missionaries
35 Celestial Gatekeeper
36 Celestial Gatekeeper
37 Spellweaver Helix
38 Worldfire
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Spider Spawning
42 Titania, Protector of Argoth
43 Divine Congregation
44 Bayou
45 Eureka
46 Mox Emerald
48 Thrull Champion
49 Godtoucher
50 Everglove Courier
51 Possessed Centaur
52 Eastern Paladin
53 Frightshroud Courier
54 Dwarven Warriors
55 Possessed Barbarian
56 Minion of Tevesh Szat
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
The Tireless Missionaries / Celestial Gatekeeper interaction seems nice, although perhaps not the most efficient. (It also prevents me from using Possessed Aven down below, so something else could be better for the lifegain.) There are two Changeling Heros to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Omniscience. Looking at it again though, we don't have a way to get back Horobi, Death's Wail and Titania, Protector of Argoth. I suppose we could add Goryo's Vengeance for them both.
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Selesnya Keyrune
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Changeling Hero
23 Changeling Hero
24 Anaba Ancestor
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Salvaging Station
28 Copy Enchantment
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Into Thin Air
31 Brace for Impact
32 Child of Alara
33 Tireless Missionaries
34 Celestial Gatekeeper
35 Celestial Gatekeeper
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Titania, Protector of Argoth
42 Goryo's Vengeance
43 Divine Congregation
44 Bayou
45 Eureka
46 Mox Emerald
48 Thrull Champion
49 Godtoucher
50 Everglove Courier
51 Possessed Centaur
52 Eastern Paladin
53 Frightshroud Courier
54 Dwarven Warriors
55 Possessed Barbarian
56 Minion of Tevesh Szat
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
There are a few other issues too: with 2x Changeling Hero, we can bounce both, replay one to champion Dwellers, put our necessary preprocessing on the stack, then play the second, champion the first, and cast Rebuild with the Dwellers. And we can just use the Changeling to blink Tireless Missionaries as needed, so that won't work in the megastage. We also have to be careful to make sure we always need a hasty artifact token to continue in the middle: we can champion Vedalken Orrery under a changeling, which is an issue. I still think it's possible, but we have a ways to go.
In slightly better news, I've found a slight improvement we can make to the Moggcatcher deck, and any other deck that has a Smite the Monstrous-based megastage and an Old Man of the Sea stage near the top: swap Reality Spasm for Tribal Unity.
We can still kick start the combo this way, by using Tribal Unity to pump Xathrid Gorgon so its power is 4 or greater. Then, when we cast it later, each individual copy from Thousand-Year Storm can pump the power of all out Old Man of the Sea tokens so that they can target the Gorgon. We build a "stage" of Old Men targeting the Gorgon, and turn one copy of the spell resolving into n Gorgons. That should add an extra layer over Reality Spasm.
I also found a possible avenue for a sixth stage in that deck, assuming Muzzio stays safe, based on white Mana: Sea Snidd. I'm not sure how to turn a white Mana into a copy of it and targeting of Old Man of the Sea, but it seems at least plausible as an option.
Though, I'm wondering now if being able to target Muzzio, Visionary Architect does in fact go infinite. My earlier reasoning was that we have to give up creating a hasted Muzzio token in order to get one later by targeting the nontoken. But, that can still help, provided you give up a token in the higher hyperstage to create one in the lower hyperstage. So I'm thinking we can go infinite there.
Of course, Metallurgeon has the same problem with being able to be targeted. But, when we destroy Wirewood Herald, we also destroy all Metallurgeons - can that save us?
As for the Herald, as I've thought more about it, I'm not sure it's possible to go infinite with it in any way, at least not by banking up Battle triggers. Once you cast it to trigger Bowmaster, the Battle triggers go on top of the Cephalid Shrine trigger. There is no way to even get the card off the stack before all the battles have resolved!
So, ignoring that possible infinite, we're left with something like this.
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 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Goryo’s Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Moggcatcher
24 Goblin Turncoat
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Lys Alana Bowmaster
28 Wirewood Herald
29 Thousand-Year Storm
30 Dearly Departed
31 Abzan Falconer
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Smite the Monstrous
35 Child of Alara
36 Centaur Safeguard
37 Centaur Safeguard
38 Verdant Succession
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Molderhulk
44 Natural Order
45 Bayou
46 Eureka
47 Mox Emerald
48 Polluted Dead
49 Frightshroud Courier
50 Simian Spirit Guide
51 Goblin Kites
53 Streambed Aquitects
54 Old Man of the Sea
55 Xathrid Gorgon
56 Tribal Unity
57 Sphinx’s Revelation
58 Druid’s Repository
59 World at War
60 Words of Wisdom
We can use Natural Order as the lifegain spell here because this time, we can use it to tutor out both Safeguards, use the 3 life gained from sacrificing one to play out a megastage, this time gaining 6 life because both Safeguards were out, then use the next Natural Orders down to get both back. So that's good for six layers and five stages over the top. Plus, if we can find any way to turn a white Mana into targeting of nonblack creatures, we could plausibly add a sixth stage.
Assuming, of course there's a way around that infinite. If not, we can go back to Battle Cry.
We do need a hasted token of Rust Tick to do anything artifact-wise, so we do need to dip into Psychic Battle triggers wherever those are on the stack. The potential problem is that we can use a PB trigger to destory the nontoken Rust Tick, create a Rust Tick token, tap the hasted Muzzio to retrieve the nontoken Rust Tick, target it with the next PB trigger, and create another Rust Tick token. I haven't gone into a deep analysis but it looks infinite.
I have to think more about whether Metallurgeon can go infinite.
Assuming we can make it all work, I wonder about the possibility of removing Verdant Succession and Natural Order to free up green creatures - without Possessed Centaur I don't know how to do 6 stages in less than 10 cards, so we would need to make the change without adding any more cards. Something to think about.
Also, with Scattershot Archer instead of target fliers/Humans, that would free up Humans anc fliers to be used as transition creatures, or possibly in mana stages... not sure what we can make of that.
Then, in the megastage, you use up your explosives like so: crack the first one to kill Herald, searching out Bowmaster, and make a token copy of Herald with vat. Play Dark-Dwellers, crack Explosives again with the Rebuild, and that lets you kill the token Herald to get the nontoken. Play Moggcatcher, play Herald, and get a hasty Moggcatcher. But, we can't use it yet, because Dark-Dwellers is now on the battlefield so we can't tutor it out with the ability. We have to use the ability to get back Goblin Turncoat. Then, we can use the Turncoat to put Dwellers on the Vat and get a new hyperstage, but we need the explosives from it to kill Herald, giving us the Succession triggers for it that we need to keep going with the combo. So that feels pretty solid to me.
And oof. Yeah, that looks like an infinite all right. I think Metallurgeon should save us then, because even though we can generate March triggers with Rebuild, and we can use Battle triggers to kill it and regenerate the same triggers, we can't do them in the right order. The problem then is, we need a new way to save Omniscience through the megastage transition. I know Flash isn't a safe starting tool, but I wonder if there's some other way to use Academy Rector as the setup, because then it could do double duty.
I'm thinking that Metallurgeon still goes infinite. We can use our Metallurgeon tokens to create a stage, with Bloodbond March triggers on the top. We can then crack an Explosives to destroy both Wirewood Herald and Metallurgeon, creating tokens of both. We use the Wirewood Herald trigger to return it to our hand, and then resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return Metallurgeon to the battlefield. Use the Metallurgeon token to extend the stage by a couple layers. Cast the Herald to bounce Moggcatcher, sacrifice Goblin Dark-Dwellers, creating a token copy, make the hyperstage transition, get Explosives back with Rebuild, and sacrifice it again to destroy Herald and Metallurgeon again. Create a couple more layers of the Metallurgeon stage, play Moggcatcher for Bloodbond March triggers and destroy it with the Herald, and create a Moggcatcher token. Tap the token to bring back Dark-Dwellers, and get Explosives back, going back to where we started, but with four more layers in the Metallurgeon stage.