Altar of Dementia is still around, as both a sacrifice outlet and a spirit guide rescue mission, and it can mill any player for cards. If Kurkesh works somehow, that switch wouldn't even save a slot, with Mirror Gallery still tied up.
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.
Argent Mutation can't be the targeting card because it is blue, the same color as one "A. Windform".
What's the problem with having a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami?
If anything can be an artifact, then those two can reach up and smack anything. Particularly, if Gilder Bairn becomes an artifact, Metallurgeon can start regenerating it.
Altar of Dementia is still around, as both a sacrifice outlet and a spirit guide rescue mission, and it can mill any player for cards. If Kurkesh works somehow, that switch wouldn't even save a slot, with Mirror Gallery still tied up.
Argent Mutation can't be the targeting card because it is blue, the same color as one "A. Windform".
If anything can be an artifact, then those two can reach up and smack anything. Particularly, if Gilder Bairn becomes an artifact, Metallurgeon can start regenerating it.
I think because of that, Argent Mutation can actually be used safely. Reaching up and targeting the higher artifacts doesn't seem to be a problem, since those cards can be targeted anyway as enchantments; but yeah, regenerating Gilder Bairn is a problem. Still, it looks like we can forget about Gilder Bairn, and still add three layers.
Of course, we would like to add Gilder Bairn as well, if possible. The best sequence that we had that didn't use Metallurgeon used two more transition cards; so adding those plus Argent Mutation, Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient and Gilder Bairn requires a five card cut. We can remove the two Chancellor of the Dross, Mana Crypt, and Consecrated Sphinx - and after that, I can't think of any more. So, we really need to find a sequence with zero or one transition cards that doesn't use Metallurgeon, if we want that last layer.
Sydri gives lifelink, and it can do so for Reckless Assault to make a short circuit.
Argent Mutation isn't even safe anyway: play it to pass some targets around, make something irrelevant into an artifact, and draw Bloated Toad; then Bloated Toad cycles to draw Argent Mutation again--no need to ever cast Toad. Repeat, and the target-passing means this is more than just running in idle, producing a lot more than the 2-mana cost for cycling after all. So that leaves us with no safe way to make things into artifacts, and the Kurkesh layers are out until we get a more reasonable card there.
About Consecrated Sphinx, yes the initial Words of Wisdom will cause it to trigger. But it'll also cause Nekusar to trigger, and that does a hell of a lot more. By comparison, the Sphinxes are downright puny, putting them a ways down on the wait list of cards as long as we still have the luxury of a few filler slots.
With only Show and Tell, how does Liquimetal Coating ever get reset to turn each of the Night Dealings copies (and so on) into artifacts? We need something like -Consecrated Sphinx +Krark-Clan Ironworks. Actually scrap that, we can fuse a couple of the sacrifice outlets with -Stormwatch Eagle +Lithatog.
Given our access to fast mana, I think there's a place here for Ink-Treader Nephilim to come into its own. We can drop it first turn by our assumption that everything goes out way (3 moxen and a land), then proceed to chain card draw and rituals to draw our deck. White Sun's Zenith for lots of tokens, Arcbond on the Nephilim, copying it. Gut Shot Inky and go arbitrarily large.
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Given our access to fast mana, I think there's a place here for Ink-Treader Nephilim to come into its own. We can drop it first turn by our assumption that everything goes out way (3 moxen and a land), then proceed to chain card draw and rituals to draw our deck. White Sun's Zenith for lots of tokens, Arcbond on the Nephilim, copying it. Gut Shot Inky and go arbitrarily large.
If you deal damage one at a time, you will kill the opponent after dealing 20 damage. If you add some cards to avoid killing the opponent, make sure that you can't "go arbitrarily large"; a deck must have a maximum possible damage in order to be valid in this contest.
Is there a card like Arcbond, that takes damage to a single creature and traslates into damage to a bunch of creatures? Arcbond doesn't quite work, but perhaps a similar card might.
A creature sacrifice outlet is needed to get multiple Bloodbond March returns for Black Poplar Shaman, Skyshroud Archer, Copper Myr, and Axebane Guardian (plus some less important things like Nekusar).
Matches for "that much damage to each": Arcbond (already explored), Hydra Omnivore (worthless), Kusari-Gama (equipment), Coalhauler Swine (doesn't help), Balefire Dragon (just a bad 5AF parallel), Ashling the Pilgrim (interesting, but probably not productive, and even if it was then a cost of red mana alone is too low). Modifying it into "damage to each" + "dealt" just picks up stuff like Syphon Soul and Yamabushi's Flame.
It looks like that works, but cutting far enough into deck space to lose Finest Hour really hurts the aesthetics of the finish. I think if we could just get one more slot freed up to put that back, I'd be satisfied with where the deck is.
Not that it even threatens to save a slot, but Jungle Patrol has a bit of slot overlap with Intrepid Hero, taking advantage of the fact that red creatures are the only ones getting pumped in any way (via Paragon of Fierce Defiance). Except they had to go and make Pale Recluse a 4/5 instead of a more spiderlike 3/6.
Elves could be squeezed in as stage 2 with Llanowar Dead, and then if we had a black creature that targeted Elves or made green mana (without being an Elf itself--that's the big rub) that's home free right there, with Spinal Villain able to take over slot 17. For once, Nectar Faerie's lifelink would not be a problem, but the fact that it targets itself certainly is--just the opposite of how it was being used in the past.
As another approach, Squandered Resources very nearly takes over for Amulet of Vigor while also subsuming the land sacrifice outlet. It doesn't capture the snow-covered nature of the land, though, and it still leaves Lithatog on just to recycle Liquimetal Coating.
I even tried to consider the ramifications of that Fate Transfer idea before seeing that it's a nonstarter anyway. Fate Transfer can move counters from one Night Dealings onto a second Night Dealings, multiplying them severalfold, and the extra counters can bring back Fate Transfer among other cards.
...wait, Kavu Recluse! We have a Swamp underneath those, and even an Island, so these can landshape for the mana in contrast to what Slimy Kavu's role was before. Problem solved, then. -Overgrown Battlement, -Goblin Digging Team, +Kavu Recluse, +Finest Hour.
Sweet. Yeah, I'm pretty satisfied with where the deck is as well.
With Reckless Assault we can start paying life early on in order to draw more cards, and at a higher level than Yawgmoth's Bargain, so Yawgmoth's Bargain can be replaced by Primal Surge, to ramp up Reckless Assault as early as possible.
Edit #2: We can add two more layers, by removing Reckless Assault and adding Unspeakable Symbol and Ion Storm. This requires getting rid of Finest Hour again, unfortunately.
We could almost have replaced both cards by Cruel Sadist and an untapping spell, except Cruel Sadist can deal more than 2 damage.
Upon further consideration, Words of Wisdom is still a little bit better than Noggle Ransacker. The fact that Noggle Ransacker gets double the Nekusar triggers is not that important, considering that the number of Nekusars increases dramatically between each instance of Noggle or Words. More important is the fact that Words of Wisdom can be cast 53 times before the first combat phase, while Noggle can only be cast 52 times.
Memory Jar is a lot clunkier than Words of Wisdom, but it has the advantage of drawing seven cards as opposed to the two cards of Words of Wisdom, which is just enough to get started. We have to worry about cards in our hand and the opponent's hand getting exiled, but both issues seem to be manageable. We can never activate Memory Jar while we have cards in our hand; always cast all our cards first. Also, we can only activate Memory Jar a few times while the opponent has cards in his hand; basically, we will activate Memory Jar seven times prior to the first combat phase, and we will then play the combo out while the opponent basically has a deck of 7 to 11 cards, which should not pose a problem.
Okay, just to check let's see if we can get started with the current deck. Start with a draw of Simian Spirit Guide, Elvish Spirit Guide, Island, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Leyline of Anticipation, and Memory Jar. Play those out in order, and activate Memory Jar. Draw Opalescence, Minion Reflector, Composite Golem, Doubling Season, Unspeakable Symbol, Ion Storm, and Night Dealings. Play the first three, getting an MR trigger for Composite Golem, and respond to that by playing Doubling Season, getting an MR trigger for it as well. Respond by sacrificing Composite Golem for a mana of each color. Spend all but the black mana to pay for the MR triggers, getting three total Doubling Seasons and eight total Composite Golems. This gives us a pool of 41 total mana including nine black mana. Play the last three cards, paying for the MR trigger for Night Dealings and getting nine Night Dealings in total. Pay 3 life to put a +1/+1 counter on any creature (might as well be Unspeakable Symbol), and remove that counter to deal two damage to the opponent. This triggers all nine Night Dealings; resolve the first of them, putting 16 counters on it. play BBBBBB6 and remove 12 counters from NIght Dealings to fetch Allay, Cowardice, and Psychic Battle from the library. Play Cowardice and Psychic Battle, paying the MR trigger for Psychic Battle. Play Allay with buyback, getting nine Psychic Battle triggers and allowing us to bounce Doubling Season 10 times. Resolve the first nine bounces, and pay for nine MR triggers, producing more than 2^^10 Doubling Season tokens. Pay BB2 and remove 3 counters from Night Dealings to fetch Basal Sliver. Play Basal Sliver, and after paying the MR trigger we will have more than 2^^11 black mana available, and after resolving the second Night Dealings trigger we will have more than 2^^11 theft counters on it, allowing us to fetch the entire deck and fetch Liquimetal Coating more than 2^^11 times, and we are off and running. (Among other things, we can turn the second Night Dealings into an artifact so that it can be copied by Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient.)
It's funny how Flamerush Rider only works because the Gilder Bairn tokens still keep the haste that Minion Reflector gives them at a copiable level, after some tries in earlier frameworks were thwarted by that very distinction.
Very interesting idea! But can you explain how the color linking is supposed to work? If we have say Mercenary Informer and Sokenzan Renegade, we can use a white mana to get a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers targeting Mercenaries. If we previously played Sokenzan Renegade, we would have a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers below the Psychic Battle triggers. If we then imprinted Sokenzan Renegade onto Chrome Mox, we would need to resolve all the Psychic Battle triggers to get to the Bloodbond March triggers below. So we can get one imprinting of Sokenzan Renegade per white mana spent, which gives us one red mana. A one-to-one conversion rate isn't good enough to get multiple Ackermann stages. Unless I am missing something?
No wait, we can also use a Psychic Battle trigger to target Mercenary Informer, recycling the white mana. So the red mana can piggyback off the white mana, so I think we do indeed get a lot of red mana. Damn, this can be confusing!
Okay, that gives us five stages using relatively few cards. The big question is whether or not we can get to eight or more stages using Chrome Mox. Our current setup has fives stages for the five colors, one for snow mana, one for Swamps using Horror of Horrors, and one for general cycling.
I'm a little confused about the bottom of the sequence; we have Lim-Dul the Necromancer to target Zombies, but we don't have any black Zombies.
That does make all those steps look so much more compact.
Chrome Mox + March is bad news without a static boost, and I don't see one there. Fortunately, BFZ brings the cleanest implementation of single-use pump yet, with Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and that's just a one-card cost to fix. It's so effective, in fact, that I believe the previous version of the deck without arrow iterators can use it to dump both Thran Dynamo and Soul of New Phyrexia, freeing up a slot there to add Devout Lightcaster again.
The other problem, one that hasn't shown up in a while, is that there's no way to get the 3 mana for Show and Tell. This is actually a harder problem to solve than it might seem: we can't just stick a Mana Crypt or something in the deck, because Crypt + Seal of Primordium + Minion Reflector is infinite (Chrome Mox is only safe because it requires the consumption of a card in hand before it can start producing mana). A one-off 2-mana land like City of Traitors fits the bill, as does reintroducing SSG, but each of those options is highly underwhelming for a card slot. Doing the Chancellor start isn't an option with either of them.
With those changes, 58 cards are accounted for. It's not going to make much of a difference, but I wonder if we can dump the Lithatog slot as well, now that artifacts are creatures and they can be sacrificed to Altar or whatever sacrifice outlet ends up making the cut. Greater Gargadon is close, but those are counters that Doubling Season won't double, and there isn't a convenient way to bounce it after it runs out of counters and has to leave the exile zone.
This is a very cool challenge. I've had a lot of fun wrapping my head around how your current deck works, and trying to work out improvements. That said I think I have found a problem:
We can add a seventh stage by using Horror of Horrors. This is a little different because we can't accumulate Swamps, but with a large number of Slimy Kavus (for example), we can build up a large stack by converting other lands to Swamps one at a time and sacrificing them to Horror of Horrors to repeatedly bounce Twisted Abomination. Once the Slimy Kavus are expended, we can proceed in the usual way by discarding Twisted Abomination to retrieve the actual Swamp.
You've used that stage for a while now but does it actually work? As I understood it in the other stages once we reach a stack of
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Psychic Battle
we resolve it down to just the last Psychic Battle + 2 Mana and can then use that mana to rebuild the stack to get
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
...
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
...
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
But in the Horror of Horrors stage, since the swamps cannot be saved for later, we cannot rebuild the entire trigger tower after resolving the second to last Psychic Battle.
I don't think that's good enough to be an Ackerman stage - it doesn't have the structure where a trigger refreshes the layer of triggers before it anymore. I see the same problem in the Bloated Toad stage.
If I'm understanding something incorrectly, could you try to explain it once more?
No, you're absolutely right - I don't see how keep the stack up. I guess I got too cavalier with extending the Ackermann combos. I think it's okay through the first Psychic battle layer, the first Bloodbond March layer, and the second Psychic Battle layer, but once we get to the second Bloodbond March layer, we don't have a way of getting the first Bloodbond March layer again. So it's worth three traditional layers, not the full Ackermann stage.
Of course, if there's going to be a life sink in a major step, the whole Unspeakable Symbol/Nekusar minor step at the top isn't going to fly. We can almost plug the gap with Lorescale Coatl, except that it triggers on the cycling lower down, so we have to trigger on the opponent's draws. Underworld Dreams will cut Ion Storm and its activated ability out of the loop; is anyone seeing a way to salvage at least that effect?
Shoot, I was just about to suggest Ion Storm / Chasm Skulker / Psychic Possession, which would get us back up to 17 layers; but yeah, we draw a card when we cycle.
Anything that triggers either on opponent's draw or opponent's discard is a possibility, but I haven't found anything suitable yet.
I've got nothing on salvaging those things at the moment, but if life total has become an expendable resource, I had a zany idea when you were looking for an efficient sac outlet of using Lich's Tomb with some sort of life payment as some sort of wonky, self-limiting sac engine. I don't know what that would be or how it could possibly be more efficient; I was just proud of myself for imagining something that stupid.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
The setup then proves useful when we start using creatures that can tap to target another copy of the creature. Primarily the Paragon cycle in M15. The Soul Foundry tokens of those can bounce the original, but the original can not bounce itself. Psychic Battle triggers of the original might be used to target it after it has been replayed, but to replay it in the first place a token has to be used so that should be okay.
Altar of Dementia is still around, as both a sacrifice outlet and a spirit guide rescue mission, and it can mill any player for cards. If Kurkesh works somehow, that switch wouldn't even save a slot, with Mirror Gallery still tied up.
Argent Mutation can't be the targeting card because it is blue, the same color as one "A. Windform".
If anything can be an artifact, then those two can reach up and smack anything. Particularly, if Gilder Bairn becomes an artifact, Metallurgeon can start regenerating it.
Ah, the Altar can target anybody. Well, as far as I can see we don't need a sacrifice outlet for creatures, so Altar of Dementia can be replaced by any card that mills just our cards (Hair-Strung Koto will work, if we get rid of Gilder Bairn). Switching to Bloodchief Ascension woouldn't save a slot, but it would allow Decimator Web to be used, which is better than Chancellor of the Dross.
I think because of that, Argent Mutation can actually be used safely. Reaching up and targeting the higher artifacts doesn't seem to be a problem, since those cards can be targeted anyway as enchantments; but yeah, regenerating Gilder Bairn is a problem. Still, it looks like we can forget about Gilder Bairn, and still add three layers.
Of course, we would like to add Gilder Bairn as well, if possible. The best sequence that we had that didn't use Metallurgeon used two more transition cards; so adding those plus Argent Mutation, Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient and Gilder Bairn requires a five card cut. We can remove the two Chancellor of the Dross, Mana Crypt, and Consecrated Sphinx - and after that, I can't think of any more. So, we really need to find a sequence with zero or one transition cards that doesn't use Metallurgeon, if we want that last layer.
So I have:
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 Sydri, Galvanic Genius
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 Reckless Assault
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 Argent Mutation
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Omniscience
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
46 Consecrated Sphinx
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
Argent Mutation isn't even safe anyway: play it to pass some targets around, make something irrelevant into an artifact, and draw Bloated Toad; then Bloated Toad cycles to draw Argent Mutation again--no need to ever cast Toad. Repeat, and the target-passing means this is more than just running in idle, producing a lot more than the 2-mana cost for cycling after all. So that leaves us with no safe way to make things into artifacts, and the Kurkesh layers are out until we get a more reasonable card there.
About Consecrated Sphinx, yes the initial Words of Wisdom will cause it to trigger. But it'll also cause Nekusar to trigger, and that does a hell of a lot more. By comparison, the Sphinxes are downright puny, putting them a ways down on the wait list of cards as long as we still have the luxury of a few filler slots.
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 Liquimetal Coating
30 Night Dealings
31 Repercussion
32 Reckless Assault
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 Primal Surge
41 Leyline of Anticipation
42 Show and Tell
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Omniscience
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
46 Consecrated Sphinx
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
If you deal damage one at a time, you will kill the opponent after dealing 20 damage. If you add some cards to avoid killing the opponent, make sure that you can't "go arbitrarily large"; a deck must have a maximum possible damage in order to be valid in this contest.
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 Liquimetal Coating
30 Night Dealings
31 Repercussion
32 Reckless Assault
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 Primal Surge
41 Leyline of Anticipation
42 Show and Tell
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Omniscience
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
46 Boon Reflection
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 Hair-Strung Koto
56 Lithatog
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Patron of the Moon
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Phelddagrif
Is there a card like Arcbond, that takes damage to a single creature and traslates into damage to a bunch of creatures? Arcbond doesn't quite work, but perhaps a similar card might.
Matches for "that much damage to each": Arcbond (already explored), Hydra Omnivore (worthless), Kusari-Gama (equipment), Coalhauler Swine (doesn't help), Balefire Dragon (just a bad 5AF parallel), Ashling the Pilgrim (interesting, but probably not productive, and even if it was then a cost of red mana alone is too low). Modifying it into "damage to each" + "dealt" just picks up stuff like Syphon Soul and Yamabushi's Flame.
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 Overgrown Battlement
18 Dwarven Demolition Team
19 Simian Spirit Guide
20 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
22 Noble Templar
23 Plains
24 Icatian Lieutenant
25 Axebane Guardian
26 Pale Recluse
27 Snow-Covered Forest
28 Adarkar Windform
29 Bloated Toad
30 Liquimetal Coating
31 Night Dealings
32 Repercussion
33 Reckless Assault
34 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
35 Necromancer's Covenant
36 Words of Wisdom
37 Pain Magnification
38 Five-Alarm Fire
39 Gilder Bairn
40 World at War
42 Show and Tell
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Omniscience
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
46 Boon Reflection
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 Lithatog
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Patron of the Moon
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Phelddagrif
Not that it even threatens to save a slot, but Jungle Patrol has a bit of slot overlap with Intrepid Hero, taking advantage of the fact that red creatures are the only ones getting pumped in any way (via Paragon of Fierce Defiance). Except they had to go and make Pale Recluse a 4/5 instead of a more spiderlike 3/6.
Elves could be squeezed in as stage 2 with Llanowar Dead, and then if we had a black creature that targeted Elves or made green mana (without being an Elf itself--that's the big rub) that's home free right there, with Spinal Villain able to take over slot 17. For once, Nectar Faerie's lifelink would not be a problem, but the fact that it targets itself certainly is--just the opposite of how it was being used in the past.
As another approach, Squandered Resources very nearly takes over for Amulet of Vigor while also subsuming the land sacrifice outlet. It doesn't capture the snow-covered nature of the land, though, and it still leaves Lithatog on just to recycle Liquimetal Coating.
I even tried to consider the ramifications of that Fate Transfer idea before seeing that it's a nonstarter anyway. Fate Transfer can move counters from one Night Dealings onto a second Night Dealings, multiplying them severalfold, and the extra counters can bring back Fate Transfer among other cards.
...wait, Kavu Recluse! We have a Swamp underneath those, and even an Island, so these can landshape for the mana in contrast to what Slimy Kavu's role was before. Problem solved, then. -Overgrown Battlement, -Goblin Digging Team, +Kavu Recluse, +Finest Hour.
With Reckless Assault we can start paying life early on in order to draw more cards, and at a higher level than Yawgmoth's Bargain, so Yawgmoth's Bargain can be replaced by Primal Surge, to ramp up Reckless Assault as early as possible.
Edit: Also, Words of Wisdom can be replaced by Noggle Ransacker, which gets us two triggers of Nekusar, the Mindrazer per Pain Magnification.
Edit #2: We can add two more layers, by removing Reckless Assault and adding Unspeakable Symbol and Ion Storm. This requires getting rid of Finest Hour again, unfortunately.
We could almost have replaced both cards by Cruel Sadist and an untapping spell, except Cruel Sadist can deal more than 2 damage.
Upon further consideration, Words of Wisdom is still a little bit better than Noggle Ransacker. The fact that Noggle Ransacker gets double the Nekusar triggers is not that important, considering that the number of Nekusars increases dramatically between each instance of Noggle or Words. More important is the fact that Words of Wisdom can be cast 53 times before the first combat phase, while Noggle can only be cast 52 times.
Memory Jar is a lot clunkier than Words of Wisdom, but it has the advantage of drawing seven cards as opposed to the two cards of Words of Wisdom, which is just enough to get started. We have to worry about cards in our hand and the opponent's hand getting exiled, but both issues seem to be manageable. We can never activate Memory Jar while we have cards in our hand; always cast all our cards first. Also, we can only activate Memory Jar a few times while the opponent has cards in his hand; basically, we will activate Memory Jar seven times prior to the first combat phase, and we will then play the combo out while the opponent basically has a deck of 7 to 11 cards, which should not pose a problem.
Okay, just to check let's see if we can get started with the current deck. Start with a draw of Simian Spirit Guide, Elvish Spirit Guide, Island, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Leyline of Anticipation, and Memory Jar. Play those out in order, and activate Memory Jar. Draw Opalescence, Minion Reflector, Composite Golem, Doubling Season, Unspeakable Symbol, Ion Storm, and Night Dealings. Play the first three, getting an MR trigger for Composite Golem, and respond to that by playing Doubling Season, getting an MR trigger for it as well. Respond by sacrificing Composite Golem for a mana of each color. Spend all but the black mana to pay for the MR triggers, getting three total Doubling Seasons and eight total Composite Golems. This gives us a pool of 41 total mana including nine black mana. Play the last three cards, paying for the MR trigger for Night Dealings and getting nine Night Dealings in total. Pay 3 life to put a +1/+1 counter on any creature (might as well be Unspeakable Symbol), and remove that counter to deal two damage to the opponent. This triggers all nine Night Dealings; resolve the first of them, putting 16 counters on it. play BBBBBB6 and remove 12 counters from NIght Dealings to fetch Allay, Cowardice, and Psychic Battle from the library. Play Cowardice and Psychic Battle, paying the MR trigger for Psychic Battle. Play Allay with buyback, getting nine Psychic Battle triggers and allowing us to bounce Doubling Season 10 times. Resolve the first nine bounces, and pay for nine MR triggers, producing more than 2^^10 Doubling Season tokens. Pay BB2 and remove 3 counters from Night Dealings to fetch Basal Sliver. Play Basal Sliver, and after paying the MR trigger we will have more than 2^^11 black mana available, and after resolving the second Night Dealings trigger we will have more than 2^^11 theft counters on it, allowing us to fetch the entire deck and fetch Liquimetal Coating more than 2^^11 times, and we are off and running. (Among other things, we can turn the second Night Dealings into an artifact so that it can be copied by Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient.)
The current deck:
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 Kavu Recluse
18 Simian Spirit Guide
19 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
20 Jungle Patrol
21 Noble Templar
22 Plains
23 Icatian Lieutenant
25 Pale Recluse
26 Snow-Covered Forest
27 Adarkar Windform
28 Bloated Toad
29 Liquimetal Coating
30 Night Dealings
31 Repercussion
32 Ion Storm
33 Unspeakable Symbol
34 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
35 Necromancer's Covenant
36 Memory Jar
37 Pain Magnification
38 Five-Alarm Fire
39 Gilder Bairn
40 Flamerush Rider
41 World at War
42 Leyline of Anticipation
43 Show and Tell
44 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
45 Omniscience
46 Boon Reflection
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 Lithatog
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Patron of the Moon
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Phelddagrif
Edit: And, just as soon as we add back Finest Hour, we have to remove it, to make way for Flamerush Rider.
No wait, we can also use a Psychic Battle trigger to target Mercenary Informer, recycling the white mana. So the red mana can piggyback off the white mana, so I think we do indeed get a lot of red mana. Damn, this can be confusing!
Okay, that gives us five stages using relatively few cards. The big question is whether or not we can get to eight or more stages using Chrome Mox. Our current setup has fives stages for the five colors, one for snow mana, one for Swamps using Horror of Horrors, and one for general cycling.
I'm a little confused about the bottom of the sequence; we have Lim-Dul the Necromancer to target Zombies, but we don't have any black Zombies.
New deck:
2 Mana Echoes
3 Icatian Lietenant
4 Keen-Eyed Archers
5 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
6 Hungry Spriggan
7 Goblin Wizard
8 Dragon Mage
9 Ghosthelm Courier
10 Havengul Skaab
11 Boneknitter
12 Igneous Pouncer
13 Swamp
14 Horror of Horrors
15 Daraja Griffin
16 Pale Recluse
17 Snow-Covered Forest
18 Adarkar Windform
20 Liquimetal Coating
21 Night Dealings
22 Repercussion
23 Ion Storm
24 Unspeakable Symbol
25 Nekusar, the Mindrazor
26 Necromancer's Covenant
27 Words of Wisdom
28 Pain Magnification
29 Five-Alarm Fire
30 Gilder Bairn
31 Flamerush Rider
32 Finest Hour
33 World at War
34 Chrome Mox
35 March of the Machines
36 Mirror of Fate
37 Leyline of Anticipation
38 Show and Tell
39 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
40 Omniscience
41 Boon Reflection
42 Opalescence
43 Doubling Season
44 Bloodbond March
45 Cephalid Shrine
46 Cowardice
47 Psychic Battle
48 Minion Reflector
49 Seal of Primordium
50 Quest for Ancient Secrets
51 Altar of Dementia
52 Lithatog
53 Firebrand Ranger
54 Mirror Gallery
55 Phelddagrif
56 Primal Surge
Chrome Mox + March is bad news without a static boost, and I don't see one there. Fortunately, BFZ brings the cleanest implementation of single-use pump yet, with Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and that's just a one-card cost to fix. It's so effective, in fact, that I believe the previous version of the deck without arrow iterators can use it to dump both Thran Dynamo and Soul of New Phyrexia, freeing up a slot there to add Devout Lightcaster again.
The other problem, one that hasn't shown up in a while, is that there's no way to get the 3 mana for Show and Tell. This is actually a harder problem to solve than it might seem: we can't just stick a Mana Crypt or something in the deck, because Crypt + Seal of Primordium + Minion Reflector is infinite (Chrome Mox is only safe because it requires the consumption of a card in hand before it can start producing mana). A one-off 2-mana land like City of Traitors fits the bill, as does reintroducing SSG, but each of those options is highly underwhelming for a card slot. Doing the Chancellor start isn't an option with either of them.
With those changes, 58 cards are accounted for. It's not going to make much of a difference, but I wonder if we can dump the Lithatog slot as well, now that artifacts are creatures and they can be sacrificed to Altar or whatever sacrifice outlet ends up making the cut. Greater Gargadon is close, but those are counters that Doubling Season won't double, and there isn't a convenient way to bounce it after it runs out of counters and has to leave the exile zone.
You've used that stage for a while now but does it actually work? As I understood it in the other stages once we reach a stack of
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
Psychic Battle
we resolve it down to just the last Psychic Battle + 2 Mana and can then use that mana to rebuild the stack to get
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
...
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
...
Psychic Battle
Bloodbound March
...
Bloodbound March
Psychic Battle
But in the Horror of Horrors stage, since the swamps cannot be saved for later, we cannot rebuild the entire trigger tower after resolving the second to last Psychic Battle.
I don't think that's good enough to be an Ackerman stage - it doesn't have the structure where a trigger refreshes the layer of triggers before it anymore. I see the same problem in the Bloated Toad stage.
If I'm understanding something incorrectly, could you try to explain it once more?
Okay, so this costs us two stages. We can get one back by going back to the Dark Heart of the Wood / Crippling Fatigue combo, where we can use our life total to "store up" lost layers. We can then go to Disciple of Grace to cycle a Snow-Covered Mountain, and use snow mana for the last stage.
Using life fouls up some of the sequence at the end, so for the moment I'm replacing Ion Storm through Necromancer's Covenant with Underworld Dreams.
2 Mana Echoes
3 Icatian Lieutenant
4 Keen-Eyed Archers
5 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
6 Hungry Spriggan
7 Goblin Wizard
8 Dragon Mage
9 Ghosthelm Courier
10 Havengul Skaab
11 Boneknitter
12 Daraja Griffin
13 Pale Recluse
14 Forest
15 Dark Heart of the Wood
16 Crippling Fatigue
17 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
18 Disciple of Grace
19 Snow-Covered Mountain
20 Rimehorn Aurochs
22 Underworld Dreams
23 Words of Wisdom
24 Pain Magnification
25 Repercussion
26 Five-Alarm Fire
27 Gilder Bairn
28 Flamerush Rider
29 Finest Hour
30 World at War
31 Liquimetal Coating
32 Gruul Ragebeast
33 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
34 Chrome Mox
35 March of the Machines
36 Mirror of Fate
37 Leyline of Anticipation
38 Show and Tell
39 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
40 Omniscience
41 Boon Reflection
42 Opalescence
43 Doubling Season
44 Bloodbond March
45 Cephalid Shrine
46 Cowardice
47 Psychic Battle
48 Minion Reflector
49 Seal of Primordium
50 Quest for Ancient Secrets
51 Altar of Dementia
52 Lithatog
53 Firebrand Ranger
54 Mirror Gallery
55 Phelddagrif
56 Primal Surge
57 City of Traitors
So I count seven stages, and 13 layers at the end, for a total of 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 3 -> 13 damage.
Thanks for the heads up, and if you think of anything, whether it be a problem with the deck or a possible improvement, please post!
Anything that triggers either on opponent's draw or opponent's discard is a possibility, but I haven't found anything suitable yet.
The setup then proves useful when we start using creatures that can tap to target another copy of the creature. Primarily the Paragon cycle in M15. The Soul Foundry tokens of those can bounce the original, but the original can not bounce itself. Psychic Battle triggers of the original might be used to target it after it has been replayed, but to replay it in the first place a token has to be used so that should be okay.
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Willow Priestess
6 Nectar Faerie
7 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
8 Walker of Secret Ways
9 Wall of Vapor
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Sokenzan Renegade
13 Mercenary Informer
14 Boros Recruit
15 Mad Auntie
17 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
18 Wilderness Hypnotist
19 Paragon of Gathering Mists
20 Norritt
21 Paragon of Open Graves
22 Lightbringer
23 Paragon of New Dawns
24 Stillmoon Cavalier
25 Deadapult
26 Soul Foundry
27 Chrome Mox
28 Cephalid Shrine
29 Cowardice
30 Psychic Battle
31 Psychic Battle
32 Grip of Chaos
34 Show and Tell
35 Omniscience
36 Enter the Infinite
37 Leyline of Anticipation
38 Opalesence
39 Hammer of Purphoros
40 March of the Machines
41 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
42 Relic Barrier
43 Shriekhorn
44 Bloodthrone Vampire
If that works as I think it does this deck has 11 Ackermann layers and still room to add cards for getting started.