Welcome to the party FortyTwo! And those are some great observations.
Wow, I really didn't think that we could get off on turn 3! But it looks like we can. Omniscience is currently okay with what I have planned; we can just keep the other options in mind if we ever want to restrict spells by color of mana.
Giving flash to our sorceries would be the best news of all. Where do you see this new Teferi, Time Bender? I quick Google search turned up nothing. If it exists, then a legendary sorcery into Board the Weatherlight into Ajani's Influence is back on the table!
if we can avoid omniscience we can run release to the wind and the mirari conjecture. this goes infinite with omniscience but if we have to spend mana to cast release it should be fine. this gets pretty good when combined w/ thousand-year storm. omniscience may prove too good to ignore though
We can proliferate lore counters of sagas to get them to go off at will, via Merfolk Skydiver or Courage in Crisis which also lets us grow creatures and add loyalty to walkers. Not sure how useful that'll be, most PW ultimates do nothing for this.
As for ways to generate lots of mana without omniscience, an Arcane Adaptation naming elf keeps Marwyn alive to be tapped for a green for each creature we have in play. Which can either be filtered 2:1 into other colors simply with Llanowar Envoy or more restrictively by reusing something like Mox Amber and controlling our legends or Dimir Locket making mana for Deadeye Plunderers to make the other colors.
Even more restrictively, Fall of the Thran can get four lands back only after being proliferated.
Some great ideas! I especially like the idea of using Mox Amber to produce mana of types that we have control over.
Thinking about my chain some more, we would need some way to shuffle sorceries back into the library without being able to shuffle Elenda back in. I don't know how to do that, so for the time being, we are back to
Can we add another layer, using some restriction of mana? We can use Expansion // Explosion to draw Precognitive Perception, except that we need red and blue mana to do so. So we can use Mox Amber to get us those colors of mana. Then, we can make Mox Amber a creature using The Antiquities War, which we can then destroy using Expansion // Explosion, to be redrawn. Hmm, but if our proliferate options are Merfolk Skydiver and Courage in Crisis, the latter we can draw using Precognitive Perception, and for the former, we already get blue from Mox Amber and green from Marwyn, the Nurturer. Still, Expansion // Explosion provides another layer, provided we can go somewhere after that to get blue and red mana. Anyone see a path from there?
Edit: Okay, I've figured out how to add a couple more layers.
So, at the bottom we have Spit Flame. Spit Flame will be used to target Immortal Phoenix, which after being destroyed, gets returned to our hand. In addition, we have three Arcane Adaptations, for which we name Dinosaur, Dragon, and Elf. Dinosaur along with Cherished Hatchling allows us to cast all our creatures with flash. Dragon allows us to return Spit Flame to our hand, once we have a red mana. And Elf pumps up Marwyn, the Nurturer. Once we have exhausted all our copies of Spit Flame, we can tap our pumped up Marywn to create lots of green mana, and use Llanwar Envoy to turn each two green into a red. We can then destroy Marwyn with Spit Flame (which will take a while, but it's okay since our Thousand-Year Storm count keeps increasing; we will have to use up some mana, but just a small fraction of the mana generated by Marwyn.), and then bring it back via Primevals' Glorious Rebirth. PGR is a legendary sorcery, so we can hook it into Board the Weatherlight. The rest of the chain remains the same. So we have
Marwyn is more productive than Board the Weatherlight used to be; each tap roughly squares the TYS count. That's not enough for Layer 1 though, so we wind up with six layers rather than seven. Still, we get more than 2^^^^^^19 damage.
Edit: We can improve this a little bit by adding Ionize. Ionize can counter Emergency Powers to put it in the graveyard to be drawn with a Precognitive Perception, but it costs us 2 life. So the next layer comes from adding life. We can add Ajani, Wise Counselor and Huatli, Warrior Poet and activate their abilities to add lots of life. So that should get is to over 2^^^^^^^11. Or, we could add Sanguine Sacrament, which will gain us lots of life, but at the cost of white mana. So again, if anyone knows a good hook for mana - I guess we could go to Mox Amber, but what next after that?
Edit: One thing we can do is to transition from Ajani's Influence into Cancel. Cancel can counter the original Ajani's Influence and send it to the graveyard, allowing the copies of Ajani's Influence to fetch it many times. Since Cancel is an instant, we can fetch it using The Mirari Conjecture; to loop The Mirari Conjecture we can cast Mortify and Nature's Spiral. Unfortunately, we cannot use Precognitive Perception or Emergency Powers, since they can be countered by Cancel, and then they can fetch Cancel. So, a different idea: Use Quasiduplicate to create many Seafloor Oracles, and attack with a power 1 Merfolk, like Deeproot Elite. Then, we can use Resurgence to keep getting new combat phases; we deal 1 damage 19 times, then swing with everything. So we have:
The full spoiler isn't out yet so there may be more sources of proliferate. I missed Flux Channeler for example.
What Phoenix are you killing? The ones in standard only return in combat or upkeep. Do you mean Squee, the Immortal? Maybe Garna, the Bloodflame to get back our guys and provide haste?
Flux Channeler also looks like something that triggers too often. Hopefully there will be more proliferate sources.
I'm killing Immortal Phoenix - "When Immortal Phoenix dies, return it to its owner's hand." Gatherer says it's Standard legal. I guess I could go with Squee, the Imomortal if Immortal Phoenix doesn't work out for whatever reason, since we only need to cast it once per time we return Spit Flame.
I guess what I'm looking for mana-wise is stuff that can come later in the chain, i.e. mana that is expensive to generate. Especially blue (for Expansion // Explosion) and white (for something like Sanguine Sacrament). Grand Warlord Radha is a good example of expensive mana, although we need red early, and green we can probably get cheap because of Marwyn.
so i've been thinking about my loop and what it is, and isn't. i'm not gonna pretend i know its a stage. i'd like to think it is but i'm still learning this stuff. what i would like to do tho is talk about why i think it's more powerful than a single layer. i'm gonna ramble here for a bit but just bear with me as if nothing else it will help me understand what's going on and why it isn't a stage level set up and that should help me be able to better understand what is going on at true stage levels
so the first thing i'm going to do is modify my list slightly to make an already establish layer level event happen. so out is yawgmoth's bargain and in will be enter the infinite and wydwen, the biting gale. the set up will basically play out the same but we will not have to pay life to get to cards. we play our our RSK/IT/IB/populate engine the same way. we then add in boon reflection and cradle of vitality. in conjunction with casting a layer level life gain spell(abuna's chant for example) we turn WBG into another layer. we do this by combining the layer inducing effects of CoV and BR and then the extra casting layer that WBG gets while those resolve. we take a life gain event that already gained us 1 layer, introduced WBG and upped it to 2 adding another layer. now while this looks very much like the YB scenario it is far far different. while we indeed did add a layer here, we didn't influence the highest of those layers. that is where the YB set up changes things. with WGB we are stuck with her just going back to hand for 1 life and we can't really improve that no matter what happens underneath her on the layering scale. we end up with a very linear progression of 1 life = 1 cast. sure our BR/CoV will be updating, and so will our casting triggers but WBG won't be getting any better. that being said her not getting better still nets us a layer .... but YB does get better .... and does so, not at a linear rate, but at the full power of the layer directly below it rate.
so lets go back to the original 20 card set up i gave. we are gonna just let our N-3 draws loop on themselves doing CC castings as they happen and updating as we go. so lets start this at the end of the n-3 draws. we do our last bit of updating, populate a riftsweeper getting CC back into our deck, lastly we update the Illusionist's Bracers on YB and then we pay 1 life generating D draw actions. so as established this is a Layer 6 level event in my build so i'll refer to our draws as D6 for a bit. D6 is being made after being powered up by 5 layers of power before it. so this means we going to be looping CC and casting it 2(D6) times. so now out first draw/cast happens. we update our board. we don't need to update YB draw ability just yet but we could. so interestingly here our board is already L5+(better than L5), but we will get back to this in a minute. so go through the whole song and dance of working our way all the way through our D6 amounts of draws/casts/recurs each time we update our board, each update pushing us further past it's original L5 start. so lets recap here for just a second. we used tools gained at L5 to make a L6 action. we then used that action to push our L5 board far past where it was to get to L6 in the first place. so as before be are out of draws and looking to activate YB again. obviously YB isn't operating at the same level as before, so it can't be a L6 any more. so what is it? well the way i see it we updated our L5 board state via a L6 action(D6 draws for 2(d6) casts) which allows for 2(D6) amounts of spell casting triggers updates. while i don't think any one update is worth a layer to itself, i find it hard to believe it doesn't jump our current board to L6 after 2(D6) of them. if this is true then when we do finally update our YB with IB i think it takes that up another level as it did at L5->L6 and YB now operates at L7. this as i lay it out is a X resource to X layer process, which is the marker for a stage.
so this has been me explaining actions in my deck comparing those action to my others deck to show the new loop i found is far far more powerful than a simple layer gaining thing, but maybe a better frame of reference will help. so lets talk about the stage with metallurgen and white mana. so in short we take x resource and then use some C compounder's to compound our compounder's C times per use of our resource(i may be overly simplying things but that's the jist, using compounders to compound themselves so that when we use our next resource it is amplified that many times over). the actions might be convoluted at times but that is the basics of the math. my YB loop operates the exact same way. i take 1 of my x resources, compound my compounders many times which makes my next use of the same resource compounded compounders times better. you use BM and PB and i use populate and IB(which btw is very similar to rings of brighthearth, a known stage maker). we each take our set up cards(20 for m btw its not a small set up) and then use a resource(tokens and mana for you, 1 life for me) to compound our compounders to make our next use of said resource layer level better.we don't so much add layers as just update a layer level capacity so our next use of the resource operates as if a stage did happen(which it basically did, just without adding new cards).
i may be completely missing something along the way here, but if i am i'm curious where i'm making the mistake? if it makes it easier to see as a raw math thing just assume i cast a layer level life gain spell(and boon reflection and cradle of vitality to power it) and have N life to start. it may seem like i'm using so few cards it can't possibly be a true stage but in reality it's using 10+ cards to compound itself properly even if only a few are actually taking actions. one last thing is that CC can be pretty bland but it's convenient in the current set up because i do need a token copy of IB to get up and running. if we pull it and replace it with a generic spell we do need to get a token of IB somehow that doesn't interfere with the rest of things(mirrorworks possibly?). more than anything i'm curious where my misunderstanding of what is actually happening lies.
man i'm terrible btw. i need to go back painter's servant instead of tide. post TYS cast in current list the new RSKs will never get a counter start proliferating on. so it's back to painter's servant for all my lists ....
Huh, for some reason Immortal Phoenix doesn't get autocarded here correctly, but it is standard legal, one of those weird m19 bonus cards that didn't appear in boosters.
If you are looking for less proliferating there's several ETB proliferate guys spoiled.
Well for another way to limit colored mana there's Smothering tithe which gives 7 treasures each time we resolve Emergency Powers. If we force our opponent to draw by giving them something like Ripjaw Raptor we can get the full 60 each time through. Though if emergency powers is out then its just the 53 cards our opponent can draw.
Alternatively, we can animate a mana rock such as Azorius Locket, make it a creature with Skilled Animator or the Antiquities War and then copy it with Quasiduplicate. Though that's essentially the exact same process as Mox Amber. Which can tap for G/W/U as we'll have Teferi, Time Raveler to be able to flash in sorceries. However, the Mox is legendary and makes much less mana this way.
As for other ways to single out mana types I'm not seeing much, Fall of the Thran with proliferate (there's also apparently a landfall:proliferate creature) can get back lands which could produce whatever we need, (maybe shocklands instead of Ionize as our life sink?)
@J_kibbs: Okay, I'll try to explain why it isn't a stage, but I'm having a little trouble understanding why you think it *is* a stage, so I'll do my best to figure out what you are thinking.
What sticks out to me is where you say:
" so lets recap here for just a second. we used tools gained at L5 to make a L6 action. we then used that action to push our L5 board far past where it was to get to L6 in the first place. so as before be are out of draws and looking to activate YB again. obviously YB isn't operating at the same level as before, so it can't be a L6 any more."
okay, so what I think you are thinking is, "Spending a life on Yawgmoth's Bargain when I only had so many braces is layer 6, so, after I use that life to create way more of everything, and put way more Illusionist's Bracers on Yawgmoth's Bargain, it can't possibly still be at layer 6, can it?"
This is the wrong way to think about it. It's still layer 6. To make things simpler, let's go back to Doubling Season and creating token copies of it. So, if I create a token copy of a Doubling Season, when there are 10 Doubling Seasons in play, I create 2^10 Doubling Seasons. So that is exponentiation, which is layer 1. Now, what if I create another token? Now there are more than 2^10 Doubling Seasons in play, so creating a token creates far, far more Doubling Seasons: more than 2^2^10, in fact. But it is still Layer 1. Layer 1 is just taking some resource X and converting it into 2^X of that resource. So even if you have Graham's Number of Doubling Seasons, and created a token to get 2^Graham's Number of Doubling Seasons, that's still Layer 1.
Now, consider Yawgmoth's Bargain. Actually in the previous deck it was Layer 5; each spell we cast triggered Inexorable Tides and was at Layer 4, and activating Yawgmoth's Bargain triggered X Illusionist's Bracers and so drew X cards, allowing us to cast X spells. So we are able to repeat Layer 4 X times, where X is suitably updated number (since we can populate IBs right before we activate the YB), and therefore is Layer 5. So from X IBs we are able to create 2^^^^^X of everything; in particular, we can create 2^^^^^X IBs. So what happens when we activate YB a second time; the exact same thing, except instead of X IBs we have 2^^^^^X IBs. So how many IBs do we wind up with after we activate YB a second time and do all of our resolving? Well, we've already determined that activating a YB with X IBs, for any value of X, gets us 2^^^^^X IBs, so activating a YB with 2^^^^^X IBs gets us 2^^^^^(2^^^^^X)). So that's two applications of Layer 5, not Layer 6. Remember, to get to Level 6, we have to have X of some updated resource, and converted that into X applications of Layer 5. So for example, if we cast Divine Congregation (never mind the possibility of infinites for now), that would give us X life, allowing us to activate YB X times; that would be Layer 6.
In short, the fact that everything is increasing, and our actions our therefore "doing more" because we have more numbers of everything, that doesn't mean that the layers go up. Remember the Layer structure; Layer 1 is exponentiation, Layer 2 is repeating Layer 1 X times, Layer 3 is repeating Layer 2 X times, and so on.
In the next paragraph, you claim that your TB process works the exact same way as the Metallurgeon stage process because " in short we take x resource and then use some C compounder's to compound our compounder's C times per use of our resource". Well, that's a very vague way of stating what the Metallurgeon stage does, so it's not a good reference for whether something else does the same thing.
To implement a stage, there's something that needs to be done, there's no way around it: We need to create an ordered sequence of X different quantities. The quantities can be abilities on the stack, or perhaps they could be quantities on the battlefield; so far all our stages have been quantities on the stack, but it's not impossible that there could be a stage process implemented on the battlefield, like perhaps have a sequence of creatures of different power/toughness, and the quantities could be the number of counters on each of them.
Then, you need to be able to manipulate the quantities: we want to be able to decrease the second quantity to increase the first, or, for any N > 2, we want to be able to decrease the Nth quantity by some fixed amount to update the N-1th quantity to the size of the first quantity. (or possibly some separate quantity that keeps increasing as the first quantity does) This will let you implement a stage.
For example, in the Metallurgeon stage our quantities were the varying numbers of the sizes of our groups of triggers that were stacked one on top of the other. We could resolve the top PB group, which reduced the size by one, to increase the number of PBs on the battlefield (so the number of PBs and BMs were our "separate quantities"), and when we ran out of the top group, we reduced the top BM group (the second quantity) by one to update the top PB group to equal the number of PBs on the battlefield. So this worked the way I described above.
Stakfish's stage was a little different; rather than have the quantities alternate between two kinds of abilities, all the quantities were the same kind of ability, but they were separated by different abilities to keep the quantities separate. But still, it was the same general idea; we had X separate quantities, and we could reduce the Nth quantity by one (or some fixed amount) to update the N-1st quantity.
So as you can see, there is a very specific setup that needs to happen. In your deck, there are no X separate quantities, for an unlimited X; I mean, there are several quantities of various permanents that you have, but the number of different permanents are fixed in number, they don't increase, and you don't get X different ones when you have X life.
I guess those last few paragraphs were probably confusing. Just remember the Layer process: Layer N+1 is Layer N implemented X times, where X is updated between each implementation. You should be able to see that Yawgmoth's Bargain iterates the previous Layer X times, so it is one more layer.
Edit: FortyTwo, thanks for the ideas again. Smothering Tithe is really interesting, but it seems like it could be hard to use, since Emergency Powers is already really good and can go into the chain by itself provided it doesn't lead to an infinite. With Ripjaw Raptor we need to deal it damage, but it can't be dealt damage by playing a card. So it's a bit tricy.
I've thought about making copies of mana makers, but of course then the limiter will be Quasiduplicate, so whatever the mana is used for, it has to be lower than drawing a card or retrieving a sorcery. Similarly, with Fall of the Thran and proliferate, we need to have whatever our land is used for to be below what is proliferating (so I think Fall of the Thran plus landfall:proliferate will probably go infinite). Still, there are probably answers to some of these problems.
We use layer 4 actions to get to where we can make a layer 5 action(I was off by one layer, the list with harness was 5/6), or to start layer 5. This indeed lets us update the layer before it(layer 4) N times. My issue is that the N isn’t set. At the start of layer 5 we could do all 8 life right then and there and that in of itself should be a layer. But while yes your process manipulates everything while it’s on the stack it doesn’t mean mine isn’t updating. It quite surely is, and that updating can be applied back onto our original N process. So sure I could just take my X bracers and activate 8 times for 8X draws and that would still be a layer(small but still). However much like your stage updates DS and DN and PB and BM, mine updates all relevant things too. I get more RSK, DS, PG and more IB. While it’s with a single action my populate ability lets me update everything as much as I want basically all at once anytime I have resources to do so. While I gloss over it a bit for simplification there are a staggering amount of triggers going onto the stack when I cast a CC. In this case to get me higher and higher in wanted output(YB draws) I just concentrating everything into DS/RSK/IB and tbh it’s mainly just DS and IB, RSK I only need to update as a last action right before I move into my next casting event and only at the end of a populate ability that has been used n-1 times, via copies of the ability, to make DS. So my issue is what happens when we don’t activate it all at once. We don’t get 8x activations we get 1 at b(N-0)(our starting this looping thing amount of bracers) then we get 1 at b(N-1) then 1 at b(N-2) then 1 at b(N-3), etc until we are out of life.
I guess it boils down to this: I don’t understand how activating a l5 action from a l4 board state doesn’t become more powerful when the next time I use it it has been fully updated to reflect the l5 action. I guess that’s the part I don’t get. If u want n-1 and n+1 type set ups I have that’s too. My life is n-1 and my bracers are the n+1. That’s what is swapping places in my stacks.
Edit: I guess this is a better way to look at it. If I cast a card like accelerate a the end of the set up I would get x draws where is was my team. That should be a layer as it scales off of what I have already done. My issue is that if I cast another spell that I wanted to use to get to the next layer(I think 6 if we take YB out and replace it with accelerate) it would need to scale to my team after all of the accelerate effects had been used up(including looping CC off of my draws). So if I cast another spell that scaled off my new current team I think that gets to 6 as it would do just that. My issue is that’s exactly what YB is doing on each activation. It activates, puts things in motion and lets that motion fully update to be ready to act at a L+1 level.
We use layer 4 actions to get to where we can make a layer 5 action(I was off by one layer, the list with harness was 5/6), or to start layer 5. This indeed lets us update the layer before it(4) N times. My issue is that the N isn’t set. At the start of layer 5 we could do all 8 life right then and there and that in of itself should be a layer. But while yes your process manipulates everything while it’s on the stack it doesn’t mean mine isn’t updating. It quite surely is, and that updating can be applied back onto our original N process.
That's good, because that's what you need to get layers. Layer 5 means you apply Layer 4 on X to get 2^^^^X, then you update the relevant resource to 2^^^^X, then you apply Layer 4 again to get 2^^^^(2^^^^X), then update and apply again to get 2^^^^(2^^^^(2^^^^X)), and so on, until you've applied it X times. You seem to think that updating your numbers means that you somehow surpass layers, when in fact updating everything is what is necessary to get layers in the first place.
So sure I could just take my X bracers and activate 8 times for 8X draws and that would still be a layer(small but still).
It would be a layer above drawing one card, yes. So would activating it one time to draw X cards. But, if you have X life, then spending 1 life and a time, and updating the bracers each time, will get one layer above that. So if casting a spell is Layer 5, and activating Yawgmoth's Bargian with lots of Bracers on it is Layer 6, then gaining X life and spending it on Yawgmoth's Bargain would be Layer 7. Whereas if you spent all X life without updating your Bracers, that would just be Layer 6. So yeah, you do need to update your Bracers to get the full benefit. But at no point are we anywhere near a stage.
However much like your stage updates DS and DN and PB and BM, mine updates all relevant things too. I get more RSK, DS, PG and more IB. While it’s with a single action my populate ability lets me update everything as much as I want basically all at once anytime I have resources to do so.
Yes, updating is an important part of the layer system. It doesn't mean you have created a stage. First of all, for a stage you need to create X different quantities, where X is the amount of whatever resource is fueling the stage. You have a fixed amount of quantities, maybe 20. So you couldn't create more than 20 layers. It's actually less because you aren't getting a layer for every single card.
While I gloss over it a bit for simplification there are a staggering amount of triggers going onto the stack when I cast a CC. In this case to get me higher and higher in wanted output(YB draws) I just concentrating everything into DS/RSK/IB and tbh it’s mainly just DS and IB, RSK I only need to update as a last action right before I move into my next casting event and only at the end of a populate ability that has been used n-1 times, via copies of the ability, to make DS. So my issue is what happens when we don’t activate it all at once. We don’t get 8x activations we get 1 at b(N-0)(our starting this looping thing amount of bracers) then we get 1 at b(N-1) then 1 at b(N-2) then 1 at b(N-3), etc until we are out of life.
Yes, updating is important, and it's how you get the layers you do.
I guess it boils down to this: I don’t understand how activating a l5 action from a l4 board state doesn’t become more powerful when the next time I use it it has been fully updated to reflect the l5 action. I guess that’s the part I don’t get.p
I mean, you can think of it as being more powerful. So why isn't activating a layer 5 action after updating to reflect a layer 5 action a layer 6 action? Because that would be weak. Let's implement your idea, starting from layer 1. So if we have X doubling seasons in play, and create a token, we get 2^X new tokens. That is layer 1. And they are Doubling Seasons, so we have successfully updated our resource to reflect the layer 1 action. So if we apply the layer 1 action again, that should be layer 2 right? So 2^2^X is layer 2. Continuing in this vein, 2^2^2^X will be layer 3, 2^2^2^2^X will be layer 4 and so on. So layer N is an exponential tower of N 2's with an X at the top.
Well, we could use this definition of layer... and we would be totally flummoxed when confronted with a deck that had Opalescence, Doubling Season, Dual Nature, and Copy Enchantment in it with a way to bounce Copy Enchantment, because the number of layers would go through the stratosphere. But, if we use the proper definition of layer, where applying a layer N action after updating to a previous layer N action does _not_ increase the layer, then the above deck sits comfortably at Layer 2 per bouncing of Copy Enchantment.
If u want n-1 and n+1 type set ups I have that’s too. My life is n-1 and my bracers are the n+1. That’s what is swapping places in my stacks.
I mean, just using n-1 and n+1 somewhere doesn't mean you've created a stage. You need to do exactly what I described in the previous post.
Thanks FortyTwo. Induced Amnesia does look good, although I'm finding it a bit difficult to fit mana layers in.
I found a way to add another layer to the chain: Instead of Cancel, use Disdainful Stroke. That saves card drawers that have CMC less than 4, like Costly Plunder.
So that's up to 8 arrows, 2^^^^^^^^22. Stakfish's Polyraptor deck was around 2^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^7), let's see if we can beat him!
Edit: Okay, so I think I know how to add a couple of mana stages in. First, we need to get rid of the Marwyn, the Nurturer / Llanowar Envoy combo. So we get rid of Llanowar Envoy and add in Runaway Steam-Kin. This lets us repeat Spit Flame infinitely, so we remove Immortal Phoenix and add some random legendary Dragon like Chromium, the Mutable. (or we could just use Arcane Adaptation and loop one of our existing legendary creatures) Unfortunately, this loses us a layer since bringing Chromium back only allows one casting of Spit Flame, whereas bringing Marwyn back allowed for many. But now we can have mana layers.
So, first we replace Costly Plunder with Divination. We continue the chain with Expansion // Explosion, which can draw Divination, but only at the cost of blue mana. We get the blue mana from Mox Amber, which can tap for blue thanks to Teferi, Time Raveler. To loop Mox Amber, we need to get it off the battlefield, and then we can redraw it. So we bring in Vona, Butcher of Magan, which can destroy a nonland permanent, but only at the cost of 7 life. We then gain life using Sanguine Sacrament, which we can cast for a lot thanks to Runaway Steam-Kins, but we need two white mana. So we generate that via Smothering Tithe coupled with Induced Amnesia, Prying Bracers on a power 1 creature coupled with Response // Resurgence, and a bunch of Plains coupled with four copies of Wilderness Reclamation. So we can generate 49 white mana from Smothering Tithe, 19 from Prying Bracers, and 5X from Plains, so we wind up with 2^^^^^^^^(5X + 74)/2 damage. Still doesn't beat the Polyraptor deck, but it is an improvement!
Edit: Okay, here's a way to add a lot more white mana. We use Captain Lannery Storm. Of course, he only gets one, and he's Legendary, so we use Helm of the Host. At the beginning of combat, we create a nonlegendary token copy, then we can use Quasiduplicate to make many copies of him. Attack with them all, get lots of white mana, and then finish off the enemy with a huge Banefire.
That gets us to 2^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^^^(5X+74)/2). That puts us ahead of the Polyraptor deck!
Edit: Okay, I guess it's about time we addressed the problem of how we are going to shuffle cards back into our deck. I thought for a while that we could handle the problem with a couple of Junktrollers, since we could put one in the graveyard using Spit Flame, shuffle it back into the library with Junktroller, and draw it again with Board the Weatherlight. But, that would mean all of our uses of Junktroller would be used up just in putting Junktroller back in the library. So to recycle Junktroller, we need to either untap it, make a copy of it, or recycle it by putting it back in our hand or into our library.
We can animate Junktroller, then make a copy of it with Quasiduplicate, but redrawing Quasiduplicate requires Divination, which is way up the chain. Similarly for Devious Cover-Up, which as an instant requires us to use The Mirari Conjecture to get it back. We need to fetch Primevals' Glorious Rebirth from the library using Board the Weatherlight, so we want to be able to shuffle cards into our library by Board the Weatherlight at the latest, in order not to lose layers. Anyone have any ideas?
Deed: I hope I’m not coming off like an jerk in all this. You have been super patient with me and I am supremely greatful. I do find this type of theory crafting super interesting so I get a bit ... animated, when I get in over my head, which it appears I am currently. I’m doing my best to keep up but this stuff is kinda abstract so it’s a lot to digest. I’m basically over thinking my loop is a stage. I don’t know enough about the stage mechanics to really argue one way or the other. So in that vein I don’t really undestand when you are talking about quantities during the stage setting process. I don’t really know what you are talking about. I, as you do as well, have many different permanents in play as the stage is set. I don’t think that is what you are talking about though so I’m curious what you are talking about with the quantities end of things?
As far as what still has me confused as to why it’s just a single layer, I’ll bring up WBG and accelerate again. While you graciously explained a lot of things you never really touched on these. If we cast accelerate we get draws in an amount that scales to our current board state when we cast it. This allows for many CC casts via riftsweeper. This should be a layer if i understand layers correctly. Also given X life(maybe we gained x during set up before we could really get up and running and couldn’t take full advantage until now type of scenario) and having the YB loop or casting/bouncing WBG we will always choose the YB loop as it is significantly more potent. My question tho is in both the case of WGB and accelerate we do get a layer from those because of the added casts we will get(CC or WBG), and bargain is better than both by a wide margin. So is my YB loop just an extremely strong layer? Is that even a thing? There seem to be pretty concerte thresholds that layers need to meet, and very defined things tend to be defined in both meeting and exceeding them, so I feel like if YB is definitely better than a play that meets the layer requirements that it’s a bit harder to define. The only thing I knew of was either a) stages or b) multiple layers. The YB loop scales both cast potency(each cast we update to effect the next) and also draw potency(our final update of bracers before we activate YB again to draw), where the other cards only scale casts.
Again a bit of an apology for being a bit testy and a humble thank you for being as patient as you have been.
Absolutely no problem mate! I like to explain things, and I know you are not being stubborn on purpose, you have a certain way of thinking about it, and I am just trying to correct you. So it is all good.
I did not address Accelerate specifically, so let's talk about it now. So with the Harness the Storm combo, drawing a single instant/sorcery for which you can implement the Harness the Storm combo allows you to cast it and implement Layer 5. (Since we get many casts from the graveyard via Harness the Storm, and each spell cast implements Layer 4 in your setup.) Actually, I'm not sure how WBG and Accelerate are supposed to interact, they seem like completely separate things. Paying one life to WBG will bounce it back to you hand, and you can play it to implement Layer 4. Obviously not good at all when you have Yawgmoth's Bargain. I'm not sure how you are setting up Accelerate - I assume you have a way of putting cards from your graveyard into you library, so then Accelerate would go infinite with two copies since each one could draw the other. So I will suppose that you just have one copy, so the Harness the Storm combo is off the table. In that case, one casting of Accelerate will draw many cards, and each card draw is at Layer 5, so casting Acclerate is at Layer 6. Similarly, Yawgmoth's Bargain with many copies of Illusionist's Bracers gets you many card draws, so it too is at Layer 6 for the payment of one life. This goes to show that you need to be specific when talking about these things - questions like "is that a layer?" or "is Yawgmoth's Bargain better than Accelerate?" are a little vague and require clarifying what is actually meant. Casting one Accelerate and paying one life to Yawgmoth's Bargain both draw many cards, so both are at layer 6. So in that sense they are the same. But, if you have X life, and pay life one at a time, each time updating the number if IBs on YB, then paying all X life is Layer 7. So, paying X life to YB is one layer better than one single casting of Accelerate.
Note that, if you didn't update update the IBs on YB between each payment of one life, then paying X life would still be Layer 6, because of the multiplicative effect thing I was talking about earlier. So, updating is indeed better.
For the quantities thing - a quantity can be any number of things that you have, like number of creatures on the battlefield, amount of life you have, amount of green mana you have, number of counters on a particular permanent, or number of a particular ability on the stack. You need some types of quantities to implement layers - for example, in your deck you have:
Quantity 1: Number of Doubling Seasons
Quantity 2: Number of Illusionist Bracers triggers for a Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
Quantity 3: Number of counters on a Runaway Steam-Kin
Quantity 4: Number of Inexorable Tides
Quantity 5: Number of Thousand-Year Storm copies for Cackling Counterpart
Quantity 6: Number of Harness the Storm triggers for Cackling Counterpart
Quantity 7: Number of Illusionist Bracers triggers for Yawgmoth's Bargain
Quantity 8: Amount of life
So you've set up eight quantities, and you can reduce one to greatly increase the one before it. You can resolve one Vitu-Ghazi trigger to exponentially increase the number of Doubling Seasons. You can use 12 Runaway Steam-Kin tokens to pay for activating Vitu-Ghazi, triggering all the Illusionist Bracers, and after all the creation of Doubling Seasons you can make more Illusionist Bracers and attach them to Vitu-Ghazi. You can resolve an Inexorable Tide trigger to populate many Runaway Steam-Kins, and they all get counters boosted by the number of Doubling Seasons. So the "decrease N by a little to increase N-1 by our ever-increasing number" paradigm is set up correctly. So you get 7 layers with what you have so far.
Now, you can get a lot of layers in this fashion. Our Vintage record is 417 layers, and I made a Commander deck that reached into the mid 600s. But, there are only so many that you can make, because there are only finitely many distinct cards and interactions between cards that exist. Perhaps 1000 is possible, especially if we raise the card limit above 100, but I don't think a million is possible. Unless we move to a new paradigm.
The new paradigm is to somehow be able to set up X quantites, for theoretically _any_ number X. Of course, we won't be able to reach any X in our non-infinite deck, but the point is to not be limited by anything except the resource that we have X of and are converting into layers. So the X needs to be, at least theoretically, unlimited.
The idea that we had was for our quantities to be abilities on the stack. Now, there are only finitely many _different_ abilities in Magic, we had to reuse the same type of ability arbitrarily many times. So my setup was to have alternating types of abilites on the stack. So we could have a group of Psychic Battle triggers, then a group of Bloodbond March triggers, then PB triggers, etc. And each one could be of varying size, so each one could be a quantity.
So that's the type of setup that you need. Yes, you have some quantities, but each involve a different card. (Some different quantities involve the same card, like Illusionist Bracers on both Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage and Yawgmoth's Bargain. But still, there are only finitely many card combinations that you can make.) To make a stage, you would need to set up something like the groups of different abilities that I mentioned above. This is not an easy task at all, that's why there are fundamentally only two (maybe three) examples of it.
Hey, what do you guys think about creating a separate thread for the Standard challenge? I imagine there are quite a few people who no longer follow this thread because a) it's really hard to catch up with 78+ pages, and b) all the interactions with the Vintage deck have gotten really complex, and all the stage structures are quite hard to follow. On the other hand, the Standard challenge is basically brand new, and the complexity is much lower I think. I think it might interest some people who just skip over this thread. Thoughts?
I was just trying to show that WBG and accelerate would both be layer gaining choices if YB wasn’t part of the equation. It struck me as odd that even though WGB and accelerate both are powerful enough to gain layers they both where pretty minor gains compared to YB in the same situation(w/ WBG it’s paying 1 life for gaining something(casts with WBG but no way to update WBGs ability, where YB gets us 2x cast triggers w/ updates and the ability to update YBs original effect) and with accelerate it was drawing cards(even starting at 2 life with the YB loop we scale way past the single casting of accelerate if we are allowed to update bracers before we activate YB the one time, and the difference is even larger if we do 4x accelerate and 5 life(for 4 draws) with bargain) to generate cast triggers. In both cases YB scales far past either of the other 2 options(we use the same YB casting loop with accelerate of CC/riftsweeper and with WBG we use the same life total). It was just to point out that YB was scaling much much better than cards that scaled well enough to be considered layer making powerful and yet YB didn’t
gain me anything more on the layer scale. It seems like maybe it does by your last explaining the layers of my deck but maybe I missed something. It seems like just having access to any draw when I can loop CC/riftsweeper is worth a layer and then the ability to update YB draw power is another. Being able to update many times doesn’t get me a stage but it does get another layer. Am I understanding this correctly?
(I’m gonna repost the original 20 cards here so it’s easier to refernace as it’s a few pages back now)
As far as the quantities end of things in the stage stuff: that makes a bunch of sense then. My only thing to point out is that if we start my YB loop, even with no mana I will get mana quite quickly and when I have the mana I can use it in between pretty much any trigger to create all sorts of varying quantities pretty much at will via my populate ability. Each copy the populate ability resolve separately and can make well pretty much anything that isn’t on the stack. I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit. I can just kinda make more quantities as a result of my setup. Normally I would just choose to max out certain ones(DS for example) but I could do all sorts of weird stuff like making weird amounts of bracers and equipping the to different guildmages(I normally only use 1 but have many if I want to abuse that fact). Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively. The amount of quantities is actually super easy to manipulate because of the way the populate ability was powered up(waves of many single populate’s instead of just 1 massively powerful one). An interesting 2 cards to add to this mix would be leonin shikari and puresteel paladin. If we do this we can pull hammer of nazahn and the ability to create varying quantities becomes simpler and the maximization of bracers usage becomes just moving them all whenever we need to onto whatever we want to use. In the case of creating quantities we can again move bracers around rather arbitrarily if we are just looking for different quantities. As a perfect example we could have 2 guildmages getting ready to populate. One has all the bracers, one has none. So we activate one and then the other in response. Holding priority we move 1 bracers from the one with them onto the one without any. Then still in response we activate each again and go from 2 quantitates to 4. We hold priority again and move another bracers and repeat to go to 6. Repeat to go to 8 etc etc until we have equal amounts on each. This creates a tower of different quantities of abilities B/2(or is it just B) tall where B is our amount of bracers we started with. I’m guessing this wouldn’t do much if we just do it mid resolution of something but we could do it as set up preparation to get a bunch more quantities before we do start putting stuff on the stack.
I was just trying to show that WBG and accelerate would both be layer gaining choices if YB wasn’t part of the equation. It struck me as odd that even though WGB and accelerate both are powerful enough to gain layers they both where pretty minor gains compared to YB in the same situation(w/ WBG it’s paying 1 life for gaining something(casts with WBG but no way to update WBGs ability, where YB gets us 2x cast triggers w/ updates and the ability to update YBs original effect) and with accelerate it was drawing cards(even starting at 2 life with the YB loop we scale way past the single casting of accelerate if we are allowed to update bracers before we activate YB the one time, and the difference is even larger if we do 4x accelerate and 5 life(for 4 draws) with bargain) to generate cast triggers. In both cases YB scales far past either of the other 2 options(we use the same YB casting loop with accelerate of CC/riftsweeper and with WBG we use the same life total). It was just to point out that YB was scaling much much better than cards that scaled well enough to be considered layer making powerful and yet YB didn’t
gain me anything more on the layer scale. It seems like maybe it does by your last explaining the layers of my deck but maybe I missed something. It seems like just having access to any draw when I can loop CC/riftsweeper is worth a layer and then the ability to update YB draw power is another. Being able to update many times doesn’t get me a stage but it does get another layer. Am I understanding this correctly?
Original 20 cards
1 black lotus
2 show and tell
3 omniscience
4 yawgmoth’s bargain
5 opalesence
6 mycosynth lattice
7 dual nature
8 doubling season
9 runaway steam-kin
10 painter’s servant
11 vitu-ghazi guildmage
12 vedelkan orrery
13 karn, silver golem
14 hammer of nazahn
15 illusionist’s bracers
16 thousand-year storm
17a cackling counterpart (bracer, equip all to YB)
18 precursor golem
19 arcane adaptation
17b cackling counterpart(from graveyard)
20 riftsweeper
As far as the quantities end of things in the stage stuff: that makes a bunch of sense then. My only thing to point out is that if we start my YB loop, even with no mana I will get mana quite quickly and when I have the mana I can use it in between pretty much any trigger to create all sorts of varying quantities pretty much at will via my populate ability. Each copy the populate ability resolve separately and can make well pretty much anything that isn’t on the stack. I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit. I can just kinda make more quantities as a result of my setup. Normally I would just choose to max out certain ones(DS for example) but I could do all sorts of weird stuff like making weird amounts of bracers and equipping the to different guildmages(I normally only use 1 but have many if I want to abuse that fact). Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively. The amount of quantities is actually super easy to manipulate because of the way the populate ability was powered up(waves of many single populate’s instead of just 1 massively powerful one). An interesting 2 cards to add to this mix would be leonin shikari and puresteel paladin. If we do this we can pull hammer of nazahn and the ability to create varying quantities becomes simpler and the maximization of bracers usage becomes just moving them all whenever we need to onto whatever we want to use. In the case of creating quantities we can again move bracers around rather arbitrarily if we are just looking for different quantities. As a perfect example we could have 2 guildmages getting ready to populate. One has all the bracers, one has none. So we activate one and then the other in response. Holding priority we move 1 bracers from the one with them onto the one without any. Then still in response we activate each again and go from 2 quantitates to 4. We hold priority again and move another bracers and repeat to go to 6. Repeat to go to 8 etc etc until we have equal amounts on each. This creates a tower of different quantities of abilities B/2(or is it just B) tall where B is our amount of bracers we started with. I’m guessing this wouldn’t do much if we just do it mid resolution of something but we could do it as set up preparation to get a bunch more quantities before we do start putting stuff on the stack.
Well, WBG doesnt' really get a layer for anything, you just pay 1 life to get one cast of a spell, which is at Layer 4. I don't see why casting X different Accelerates is any worse than paying X life to Yawgmoth's Bargain, provided you have Thousand-Year Storm. Each casting of Accelerate gets lots of copies from TYS, just like YB gets lots of copies from IBs, so it's much the same.
Whoops, I just realized that in that last quantity list Quantity 5, the number of TYS copies of CC, shouldn't be there, since copies of CC do not trigger the Inexorable Tides, only casting of CCs do. So there are 7 quantities to correspond to the 7 layers.
I dunno, it's hard for me to respond to your assertions because you are being very vague. You say things like "I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit." There's a big difference between having lots of quantities, and having X quantities. If each of your layers involves having a different card, then you could set up maybe 30 or so layers, but there's no way to get a googolplex layers, for example. How would you set up a structure of X layers if you have X life? What would those layers be, and how would they perform exactly how we need them to? You need to be specific, otherwise there's not much I can say.
"Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively." - You do have more then 7 quantities, but you have 7 layers, because you can set up 7 quantities that work the way we need them too: we can reduce quantity 2, to increase quantity 1 exponentially, and we can reduce quantity N to update quantity N-1. You can make other quantities, like making lots of Karn, Silver Golems or other support cards, but they don't fit in to the sequence of layers. If you disagree, how many layers do you think you have, and what are they?
Also, you mention how you can manipulate quantities as you see fit - that's actually very bad for the layer system. In the layer system, it is important that you _cannot_ use a lower quantity to increase a higher one. If you can, the thing goes infinite. So if you have a bunch of quantities, but you can just move stuff around between any of them, you won't get layers that way. That's why it's actually hard to get lots of layers, you have to watch out for those pesky infinites.
P.S. did you see my question at the bottom of the last page?
I think moving to a T2 only thread is a good idea.
Mox Amber can also tap for white thanks to Teferi, your loop goes infinite. (100+ life costs 2 white and 2 white costs 14 life), swap for a blue guild locket?
As for how to reshuffle in standard, probably Gaea's Blessing being milled to a cheap explore or surveil source something like Tomb Robber, though wouldn't just casting it be too powerful? hmm.
Okay, I've created a new thread for the Standard challenge. Please direct all further Standard discussion there. J_kibbs, let's keep our ongoing discussion here.
So me describing my layers was a great question. Doing this helped me see why I wasn’t inherently a stage level setup. The quantities end of things still intrigues me though so I’ll list my view of my layers and see where that gets us.
First of all I tend to think from a more conceptual standpoint rather than pure math, so while my “layers” may kind of line up they may not. This is just how I think of them in the attempt to power up my board state(I tried to list them in terms of power but I might need to rearrange a few).
1 - ability to compound my token making(doubling season)
2 - ability to make a token copy of any permanent I control. (There are some restrictions(0 cmc) and hoops I have to jump through(karn+token maker) but this is the jist)
3 - ability to make mana(restriction: I have to be casting a spell currently)
4 - ability to draw cards 1 at a time (restriction: I need life to do it)
5 - ability to allow me access to more than 60 cards(riftsweeper) (restriction: I need to be able to exile cards to get them back)
6 - ability to spread targeted spells to my team(golem/arcane adaptation) (restriction(?): I need them to benefit me?)
7 - ability to update all abilities at instant speed, even while some of them are being resolved. (Restriction(?): I only have so many abilities to update?)
So looking at my own abilities I may take dual nature out of my list and replace it with mirrorworks, just to clean up the awkwardness of getting a token I can animate w/ karn to then populate with guildmage.
Interestingly if I add boom reflection and cradle of vitality these would each add a layer.
8 - ability to modify life gain amounts
9 - ability to turn life gain events into mana production
Interestingly a team scaling life gain spell wouldn’t register as a layer for me. It’s more just a straight resource and not a compounding layer as my description of my layers already takes both the life gained and the ability to compound and repurpose it already into consideration (assuming I have BR and CoV).
Also interestingly thousand-year storm doesn’t really count as layer in my through process. As u had mentioned before I don’t really gain a lot from copies of spells(unless it scales to my team via PG) other than the casting triggers so until I gain something substantial from TYS I might be able to cut it.
So my thought process puts me a few layers above the 4/5 layers from my original 20 card set up you had described, but as I can easily see it’s nowhere near being a x->x layer type set up. Again it may just be how I conceptualize things that causes the issues or it maybe that I’m thinking I’m 7 layers deep but starting at true addition rather than starting at x^x^x, which is where u start even considering things layers to begin with.
Okay, this isn't quite right. It looks like you are viewing layers as a disparate collection of things that don't necessarily connect to each other - in actuality, it is a structure where each successive layer connects to the previous one; specifically, the Nth layer has to iterate the N-1th layer X times (with suitable updating), where X is the number of a particular resource.
So for example, your 8 and your 9 could certainly be layers in different chains, but they couldn't both be layers in the same layer chain. The reason is increasing your life gain doesn't case Cradle of Vitality to trigger any more, it just triggers on any life gain event. We're going for the maximum possible length layer chain, and BR and CoV can't be in the same chain.
Also, your 5 and your 7 don't count as layers, they are more support abilities. Riftsweeper allows you to save Cackling Counterpart from exile, so that you can draw it with Yawgmoth's Bargain. But in and of itself, Riftsweeper doesn't allow you to draw CC many times. Yes, with the help of Riftsweeper, an activation of Yawgmoth's Bargain with many IBs on it will be able to draw CC many times, and that is why an activation of YB with IBs on it counts as the layer above a casting (or two) of CC. But, if you count activating YB as a layer, and also count activating Riftsweeper as a layer, you're overcounting.
Similary for 7, having the ability to cast spells with flash in an enabler, it allows you to do things the way you are supposed to, but it doesn't do anything on its own. So it doesn't count as a layer.
So, it looks like your conception of layer is rather different from how we have defined it. Again, each layer has to iterate the previous one X times. So your layers look like
Layer 1: creating a token with many Doubling Seasons
Layer 2: Activating a Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage with many IBs
Layer 3: Resolving a Runaway Steam-Kin to get many counters
Layer 4: Casting Cackling Counterpart to trigger many RSKs
Layer 5: Activating a Yawgmoth's Bargain with many IBs
So each activation of YB will taking X to 2^^^^^X
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Wow, I really didn't think that we could get off on turn 3! But it looks like we can. Omniscience is currently okay with what I have planned; we can just keep the other options in mind if we ever want to restrict spells by color of mana.
Giving flash to our sorceries would be the best news of all. Where do you see this new Teferi, Time Bender? I quick Google search turned up nothing. If it exists, then a legendary sorcery into Board the Weatherlight into Ajani's Influence is back on the table!
Electrodominance kind of gives our spells flash, but is a bit clunkier to work with than them just having flash.
Jaya's Immolating Inferno -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Precognitive Perception -> Costly Plunder -> Elenda, the Dusk Rose -> Emergency Powers
Jaya's is just there to increase the Thousand-Year Storm count. Precognitive Perception can also draw Titanic Growth, which will be used to pump up Elenda, the Dark Rose. So this should get more than 2^^^^^^19 damage.
As for ways to generate lots of mana without omniscience, an Arcane Adaptation naming elf keeps Marwyn alive to be tapped for a green for each creature we have in play. Which can either be filtered 2:1 into other colors simply with Llanowar Envoy or more restrictively by reusing something like Mox Amber and controlling our legends or Dimir Locket making mana for Deadeye Plunderers to make the other colors.
Even more restrictively, Fall of the Thran can get four lands back only after being proliferated.
Thinking about my chain some more, we would need some way to shuffle sorceries back into the library without being able to shuffle Elenda back in. I don't know how to do that, so for the time being, we are back to
Jaya's Immolating Inferno -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Precognitive Perception -> Emergency Powers
which gets us to 2^^^^19.
Can we add another layer, using some restriction of mana? We can use Expansion // Explosion to draw Precognitive Perception, except that we need red and blue mana to do so. So we can use Mox Amber to get us those colors of mana. Then, we can make Mox Amber a creature using The Antiquities War, which we can then destroy using Expansion // Explosion, to be redrawn. Hmm, but if our proliferate options are Merfolk Skydiver and Courage in Crisis, the latter we can draw using Precognitive Perception, and for the former, we already get blue from Mox Amber and green from Marwyn, the Nurturer. Still, Expansion // Explosion provides another layer, provided we can go somewhere after that to get blue and red mana. Anyone see a path from there?
Edit: Okay, I've figured out how to add a couple more layers.
So, at the bottom we have Spit Flame. Spit Flame will be used to target Immortal Phoenix, which after being destroyed, gets returned to our hand. In addition, we have three Arcane Adaptations, for which we name Dinosaur, Dragon, and Elf. Dinosaur along with Cherished Hatchling allows us to cast all our creatures with flash. Dragon allows us to return Spit Flame to our hand, once we have a red mana. And Elf pumps up Marwyn, the Nurturer. Once we have exhausted all our copies of Spit Flame, we can tap our pumped up Marywn to create lots of green mana, and use Llanwar Envoy to turn each two green into a red. We can then destroy Marwyn with Spit Flame (which will take a while, but it's okay since our Thousand-Year Storm count keeps increasing; we will have to use up some mana, but just a small fraction of the mana generated by Marwyn.), and then bring it back via Primevals' Glorious Rebirth. PGR is a legendary sorcery, so we can hook it into Board the Weatherlight. The rest of the chain remains the same. So we have
Spit Flame -> Marwyn, the Nurturer -> Primevals' Glorious Rebirth -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Precognitive Perception -> Emergency Powers
Marwyn is more productive than Board the Weatherlight used to be; each tap roughly squares the TYS count. That's not enough for Layer 1 though, so we wind up with six layers rather than seven. Still, we get more than 2^^^^^^19 damage.
Edit: We can improve this a little bit by adding Ionize. Ionize can counter Emergency Powers to put it in the graveyard to be drawn with a Precognitive Perception, but it costs us 2 life. So the next layer comes from adding life. We can add Ajani, Wise Counselor and Huatli, Warrior Poet and activate their abilities to add lots of life. So that should get is to over 2^^^^^^^11. Or, we could add Sanguine Sacrament, which will gain us lots of life, but at the cost of white mana. So again, if anyone knows a good hook for mana - I guess we could go to Mox Amber, but what next after that?
Edit: One thing we can do is to transition from Ajani's Influence into Cancel. Cancel can counter the original Ajani's Influence and send it to the graveyard, allowing the copies of Ajani's Influence to fetch it many times. Since Cancel is an instant, we can fetch it using The Mirari Conjecture; to loop The Mirari Conjecture we can cast Mortify and Nature's Spiral. Unfortunately, we cannot use Precognitive Perception or Emergency Powers, since they can be countered by Cancel, and then they can fetch Cancel. So, a different idea: Use Quasiduplicate to create many Seafloor Oracles, and attack with a power 1 Merfolk, like Deeproot Elite. Then, we can use Resurgence to keep getting new combat phases; we deal 1 damage 19 times, then swing with everything. So we have:
Spit Flame -> Marwyn, the Nurturer -> Primevals' Glorious Rebirth -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Cancel -> The Mirari Conjecture -> Mortify / Nature's Spiral -> Seafloor Oracle
This should take us to 2^^^^^^^22.
What Phoenix are you killing? The ones in standard only return in combat or upkeep. Do you mean Squee, the Immortal? Maybe Garna, the Bloodflame to get back our guys and provide haste?
As far as ways to get specifically red mana, probably the most powerful is Runaway Steam-Kin, other options are self sacrificers like Catalyst Elemental and Skirk Prospector, also Grand Warlord Radha is a big one shot generator, if we can make things work after attackers have been declared. Maybe with Response // Resurgence?
I'm killing Immortal Phoenix - "When Immortal Phoenix dies, return it to its owner's hand." Gatherer says it's Standard legal. I guess I could go with Squee, the Imomortal if Immortal Phoenix doesn't work out for whatever reason, since we only need to cast it once per time we return Spit Flame.
I guess what I'm looking for mana-wise is stuff that can come later in the chain, i.e. mana that is expensive to generate. Especially blue (for Expansion // Explosion) and white (for something like Sanguine Sacrament). Grand Warlord Radha is a good example of expensive mana, although we need red early, and green we can probably get cheap because of Marwyn.
so the first thing i'm going to do is modify my list slightly to make an already establish layer level event happen. so out is yawgmoth's bargain and in will be enter the infinite and wydwen, the biting gale. the set up will basically play out the same but we will not have to pay life to get to cards. we play our our RSK/IT/IB/populate engine the same way. we then add in boon reflection and cradle of vitality. in conjunction with casting a layer level life gain spell(abuna's chant for example) we turn WBG into another layer. we do this by combining the layer inducing effects of CoV and BR and then the extra casting layer that WBG gets while those resolve. we take a life gain event that already gained us 1 layer, introduced WBG and upped it to 2 adding another layer. now while this looks very much like the YB scenario it is far far different. while we indeed did add a layer here, we didn't influence the highest of those layers. that is where the YB set up changes things. with WGB we are stuck with her just going back to hand for 1 life and we can't really improve that no matter what happens underneath her on the layering scale. we end up with a very linear progression of 1 life = 1 cast. sure our BR/CoV will be updating, and so will our casting triggers but WBG won't be getting any better. that being said her not getting better still nets us a layer .... but YB does get better .... and does so, not at a linear rate, but at the full power of the layer directly below it rate.
so lets go back to the original 20 card set up i gave. we are gonna just let our N-3 draws loop on themselves doing CC castings as they happen and updating as we go. so lets start this at the end of the n-3 draws. we do our last bit of updating, populate a riftsweeper getting CC back into our deck, lastly we update the Illusionist's Bracers on YB and then we pay 1 life generating D draw actions. so as established this is a Layer 6 level event in my build so i'll refer to our draws as D6 for a bit. D6 is being made after being powered up by 5 layers of power before it. so this means we going to be looping CC and casting it 2(D6) times. so now out first draw/cast happens. we update our board. we don't need to update YB draw ability just yet but we could. so interestingly here our board is already L5+(better than L5), but we will get back to this in a minute. so go through the whole song and dance of working our way all the way through our D6 amounts of draws/casts/recurs each time we update our board, each update pushing us further past it's original L5 start. so lets recap here for just a second. we used tools gained at L5 to make a L6 action. we then used that action to push our L5 board far past where it was to get to L6 in the first place. so as before be are out of draws and looking to activate YB again. obviously YB isn't operating at the same level as before, so it can't be a L6 any more. so what is it? well the way i see it we updated our L5 board state via a L6 action(D6 draws for 2(d6) casts) which allows for 2(D6) amounts of spell casting triggers updates. while i don't think any one update is worth a layer to itself, i find it hard to believe it doesn't jump our current board to L6 after 2(D6) of them. if this is true then when we do finally update our YB with IB i think it takes that up another level as it did at L5->L6 and YB now operates at L7. this as i lay it out is a X resource to X layer process, which is the marker for a stage.
so this has been me explaining actions in my deck comparing those action to my others deck to show the new loop i found is far far more powerful than a simple layer gaining thing, but maybe a better frame of reference will help. so lets talk about the stage with metallurgen and white mana. so in short we take x resource and then use some C compounder's to compound our compounder's C times per use of our resource(i may be overly simplying things but that's the jist, using compounders to compound themselves so that when we use our next resource it is amplified that many times over). the actions might be convoluted at times but that is the basics of the math. my YB loop operates the exact same way. i take 1 of my x resources, compound my compounders many times which makes my next use of the same resource compounded compounders times better. you use BM and PB and i use populate and IB(which btw is very similar to rings of brighthearth, a known stage maker). we each take our set up cards(20 for m btw its not a small set up) and then use a resource(tokens and mana for you, 1 life for me) to compound our compounders to make our next use of said resource layer level better.we don't so much add layers as just update a layer level capacity so our next use of the resource operates as if a stage did happen(which it basically did, just without adding new cards).
i may be completely missing something along the way here, but if i am i'm curious where i'm making the mistake? if it makes it easier to see as a raw math thing just assume i cast a layer level life gain spell(and boon reflection and cradle of vitality to power it) and have N life to start. it may seem like i'm using so few cards it can't possibly be a true stage but in reality it's using 10+ cards to compound itself properly even if only a few are actually taking actions. one last thing is that CC can be pretty bland but it's convenient in the current set up because i do need a token copy of IB to get up and running. if we pull it and replace it with a generic spell we do need to get a token of IB somehow that doesn't interfere with the rest of things(mirrorworks possibly?). more than anything i'm curious where my misunderstanding of what is actually happening lies.
man i'm terrible btw. i need to go back painter's servant instead of tide. post TYS cast in current list the new RSKs will never get a counter start proliferating on. so it's back to painter's servant for all my lists ....
If you are looking for less proliferating there's several ETB proliferate guys spoiled.
Well for another way to limit colored mana there's Smothering tithe which gives 7 treasures each time we resolve Emergency Powers. If we force our opponent to draw by giving them something like Ripjaw Raptor we can get the full 60 each time through. Though if emergency powers is out then its just the 53 cards our opponent can draw.
Alternatively, we can animate a mana rock such as Azorius Locket, make it a creature with Skilled Animator or the Antiquities War and then copy it with Quasiduplicate. Though that's essentially the exact same process as Mox Amber. Which can tap for G/W/U as we'll have Teferi, Time Raveler to be able to flash in sorceries. However, the Mox is legendary and makes much less mana this way.
As for other ways to single out mana types I'm not seeing much, Fall of the Thran with proliferate (there's also apparently a landfall:proliferate creature) can get back lands which could produce whatever we need, (maybe shocklands instead of Ionize as our life sink?)
What sticks out to me is where you say:
" so lets recap here for just a second. we used tools gained at L5 to make a L6 action. we then used that action to push our L5 board far past where it was to get to L6 in the first place. so as before be are out of draws and looking to activate YB again. obviously YB isn't operating at the same level as before, so it can't be a L6 any more."
okay, so what I think you are thinking is, "Spending a life on Yawgmoth's Bargain when I only had so many braces is layer 6, so, after I use that life to create way more of everything, and put way more Illusionist's Bracers on Yawgmoth's Bargain, it can't possibly still be at layer 6, can it?"
This is the wrong way to think about it. It's still layer 6. To make things simpler, let's go back to Doubling Season and creating token copies of it. So, if I create a token copy of a Doubling Season, when there are 10 Doubling Seasons in play, I create 2^10 Doubling Seasons. So that is exponentiation, which is layer 1. Now, what if I create another token? Now there are more than 2^10 Doubling Seasons in play, so creating a token creates far, far more Doubling Seasons: more than 2^2^10, in fact. But it is still Layer 1. Layer 1 is just taking some resource X and converting it into 2^X of that resource. So even if you have Graham's Number of Doubling Seasons, and created a token to get 2^Graham's Number of Doubling Seasons, that's still Layer 1.
Now, consider Yawgmoth's Bargain. Actually in the previous deck it was Layer 5; each spell we cast triggered Inexorable Tides and was at Layer 4, and activating Yawgmoth's Bargain triggered X Illusionist's Bracers and so drew X cards, allowing us to cast X spells. So we are able to repeat Layer 4 X times, where X is suitably updated number (since we can populate IBs right before we activate the YB), and therefore is Layer 5. So from X IBs we are able to create 2^^^^^X of everything; in particular, we can create 2^^^^^X IBs. So what happens when we activate YB a second time; the exact same thing, except instead of X IBs we have 2^^^^^X IBs. So how many IBs do we wind up with after we activate YB a second time and do all of our resolving? Well, we've already determined that activating a YB with X IBs, for any value of X, gets us 2^^^^^X IBs, so activating a YB with 2^^^^^X IBs gets us 2^^^^^(2^^^^^X)). So that's two applications of Layer 5, not Layer 6. Remember, to get to Level 6, we have to have X of some updated resource, and converted that into X applications of Layer 5. So for example, if we cast Divine Congregation (never mind the possibility of infinites for now), that would give us X life, allowing us to activate YB X times; that would be Layer 6.
In short, the fact that everything is increasing, and our actions our therefore "doing more" because we have more numbers of everything, that doesn't mean that the layers go up. Remember the Layer structure; Layer 1 is exponentiation, Layer 2 is repeating Layer 1 X times, Layer 3 is repeating Layer 2 X times, and so on.
In the next paragraph, you claim that your TB process works the exact same way as the Metallurgeon stage process because " in short we take x resource and then use some C compounder's to compound our compounder's C times per use of our resource". Well, that's a very vague way of stating what the Metallurgeon stage does, so it's not a good reference for whether something else does the same thing.
To implement a stage, there's something that needs to be done, there's no way around it: We need to create an ordered sequence of X different quantities. The quantities can be abilities on the stack, or perhaps they could be quantities on the battlefield; so far all our stages have been quantities on the stack, but it's not impossible that there could be a stage process implemented on the battlefield, like perhaps have a sequence of creatures of different power/toughness, and the quantities could be the number of counters on each of them.
Then, you need to be able to manipulate the quantities: we want to be able to decrease the second quantity to increase the first, or, for any N > 2, we want to be able to decrease the Nth quantity by some fixed amount to update the N-1th quantity to the size of the first quantity. (or possibly some separate quantity that keeps increasing as the first quantity does) This will let you implement a stage.
For example, in the Metallurgeon stage our quantities were the varying numbers of the sizes of our groups of triggers that were stacked one on top of the other. We could resolve the top PB group, which reduced the size by one, to increase the number of PBs on the battlefield (so the number of PBs and BMs were our "separate quantities"), and when we ran out of the top group, we reduced the top BM group (the second quantity) by one to update the top PB group to equal the number of PBs on the battlefield. So this worked the way I described above.
Stakfish's stage was a little different; rather than have the quantities alternate between two kinds of abilities, all the quantities were the same kind of ability, but they were separated by different abilities to keep the quantities separate. But still, it was the same general idea; we had X separate quantities, and we could reduce the Nth quantity by one (or some fixed amount) to update the N-1st quantity.
So as you can see, there is a very specific setup that needs to happen. In your deck, there are no X separate quantities, for an unlimited X; I mean, there are several quantities of various permanents that you have, but the number of different permanents are fixed in number, they don't increase, and you don't get X different ones when you have X life.
I guess those last few paragraphs were probably confusing. Just remember the Layer process: Layer N+1 is Layer N implemented X times, where X is updated between each implementation. You should be able to see that Yawgmoth's Bargain iterates the previous Layer X times, so it is one more layer.
Edit: FortyTwo, thanks for the ideas again. Smothering Tithe is really interesting, but it seems like it could be hard to use, since Emergency Powers is already really good and can go into the chain by itself provided it doesn't lead to an infinite. With Ripjaw Raptor we need to deal it damage, but it can't be dealt damage by playing a card. So it's a bit tricy.
I've thought about making copies of mana makers, but of course then the limiter will be Quasiduplicate, so whatever the mana is used for, it has to be lower than drawing a card or retrieving a sorcery. Similarly, with Fall of the Thran and proliferate, we need to have whatever our land is used for to be below what is proliferating (so I think Fall of the Thran plus landfall:proliferate will probably go infinite). Still, there are probably answers to some of these problems.
We use layer 4 actions to get to where we can make a layer 5 action(I was off by one layer, the list with harness was 5/6), or to start layer 5. This indeed lets us update the layer before it(layer 4) N times. My issue is that the N isn’t set. At the start of layer 5 we could do all 8 life right then and there and that in of itself should be a layer. But while yes your process manipulates everything while it’s on the stack it doesn’t mean mine isn’t updating. It quite surely is, and that updating can be applied back onto our original N process. So sure I could just take my X bracers and activate 8 times for 8X draws and that would still be a layer(small but still). However much like your stage updates DS and DN and PB and BM, mine updates all relevant things too. I get more RSK, DS, PG and more IB. While it’s with a single action my populate ability lets me update everything as much as I want basically all at once anytime I have resources to do so. While I gloss over it a bit for simplification there are a staggering amount of triggers going onto the stack when I cast a CC. In this case to get me higher and higher in wanted output(YB draws) I just concentrating everything into DS/RSK/IB and tbh it’s mainly just DS and IB, RSK I only need to update as a last action right before I move into my next casting event and only at the end of a populate ability that has been used n-1 times, via copies of the ability, to make DS. So my issue is what happens when we don’t activate it all at once. We don’t get 8x activations we get 1 at b(N-0)(our starting this looping thing amount of bracers) then we get 1 at b(N-1) then 1 at b(N-2) then 1 at b(N-3), etc until we are out of life.
I guess it boils down to this: I don’t understand how activating a l5 action from a l4 board state doesn’t become more powerful when the next time I use it it has been fully updated to reflect the l5 action. I guess that’s the part I don’t get. If u want n-1 and n+1 type set ups I have that’s too. My life is n-1 and my bracers are the n+1. That’s what is swapping places in my stacks.
Edit: I guess this is a better way to look at it. If I cast a card like accelerate a the end of the set up I would get x draws where is was my team. That should be a layer as it scales off of what I have already done. My issue is that if I cast another spell that I wanted to use to get to the next layer(I think 6 if we take YB out and replace it with accelerate) it would need to scale to my team after all of the accelerate effects had been used up(including looping CC off of my draws). So if I cast another spell that scaled off my new current team I think that gets to 6 as it would do just that. My issue is that’s exactly what YB is doing on each activation. It activates, puts things in motion and lets that motion fully update to be ready to act at a L+1 level.
That's good, because that's what you need to get layers. Layer 5 means you apply Layer 4 on X to get 2^^^^X, then you update the relevant resource to 2^^^^X, then you apply Layer 4 again to get 2^^^^(2^^^^X), then update and apply again to get 2^^^^(2^^^^(2^^^^X)), and so on, until you've applied it X times. You seem to think that updating your numbers means that you somehow surpass layers, when in fact updating everything is what is necessary to get layers in the first place.
It would be a layer above drawing one card, yes. So would activating it one time to draw X cards. But, if you have X life, then spending 1 life and a time, and updating the bracers each time, will get one layer above that. So if casting a spell is Layer 5, and activating Yawgmoth's Bargian with lots of Bracers on it is Layer 6, then gaining X life and spending it on Yawgmoth's Bargain would be Layer 7. Whereas if you spent all X life without updating your Bracers, that would just be Layer 6. So yeah, you do need to update your Bracers to get the full benefit. But at no point are we anywhere near a stage.
Yes, updating is an important part of the layer system. It doesn't mean you have created a stage. First of all, for a stage you need to create X different quantities, where X is the amount of whatever resource is fueling the stage. You have a fixed amount of quantities, maybe 20. So you couldn't create more than 20 layers. It's actually less because you aren't getting a layer for every single card.
Yes, updating is important, and it's how you get the layers you do.
I mean, you can think of it as being more powerful. So why isn't activating a layer 5 action after updating to reflect a layer 5 action a layer 6 action? Because that would be weak. Let's implement your idea, starting from layer 1. So if we have X doubling seasons in play, and create a token, we get 2^X new tokens. That is layer 1. And they are Doubling Seasons, so we have successfully updated our resource to reflect the layer 1 action. So if we apply the layer 1 action again, that should be layer 2 right? So 2^2^X is layer 2. Continuing in this vein, 2^2^2^X will be layer 3, 2^2^2^2^X will be layer 4 and so on. So layer N is an exponential tower of N 2's with an X at the top.
Well, we could use this definition of layer... and we would be totally flummoxed when confronted with a deck that had Opalescence, Doubling Season, Dual Nature, and Copy Enchantment in it with a way to bounce Copy Enchantment, because the number of layers would go through the stratosphere. But, if we use the proper definition of layer, where applying a layer N action after updating to a previous layer N action does _not_ increase the layer, then the above deck sits comfortably at Layer 2 per bouncing of Copy Enchantment.
I mean, just using n-1 and n+1 somewhere doesn't mean you've created a stage. You need to do exactly what I described in the previous post.
Though I think Induced amnesia probably has the most potential.
I found a way to add another layer to the chain: Instead of Cancel, use Disdainful Stroke. That saves card drawers that have CMC less than 4, like Costly Plunder.
Spit Flame -> Marwyn, the Nurturer -> Primevals' Glorious Rebirth -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Disdainful Stroke -> The Mirari Conjecture -> Mortify / Nature's Spiral -> Costly Plunder -> Seafloor Oracle
So that's up to 8 arrows, 2^^^^^^^^22. Stakfish's Polyraptor deck was around 2^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^7), let's see if we can beat him!
Edit: Okay, so I think I know how to add a couple of mana stages in. First, we need to get rid of the Marwyn, the Nurturer / Llanowar Envoy combo. So we get rid of Llanowar Envoy and add in Runaway Steam-Kin. This lets us repeat Spit Flame infinitely, so we remove Immortal Phoenix and add some random legendary Dragon like Chromium, the Mutable. (or we could just use Arcane Adaptation and loop one of our existing legendary creatures) Unfortunately, this loses us a layer since bringing Chromium back only allows one casting of Spit Flame, whereas bringing Marwyn back allowed for many. But now we can have mana layers.
So, first we replace Costly Plunder with Divination. We continue the chain with Expansion // Explosion, which can draw Divination, but only at the cost of blue mana. We get the blue mana from Mox Amber, which can tap for blue thanks to Teferi, Time Raveler. To loop Mox Amber, we need to get it off the battlefield, and then we can redraw it. So we bring in Vona, Butcher of Magan, which can destroy a nonland permanent, but only at the cost of 7 life. We then gain life using Sanguine Sacrament, which we can cast for a lot thanks to Runaway Steam-Kins, but we need two white mana. So we generate that via Smothering Tithe coupled with Induced Amnesia, Prying Bracers on a power 1 creature coupled with Response // Resurgence, and a bunch of Plains coupled with four copies of Wilderness Reclamation. So we can generate 49 white mana from Smothering Tithe, 19 from Prying Bracers, and 5X from Plains, so we wind up with 2^^^^^^^^(5X + 74)/2 damage. Still doesn't beat the Polyraptor deck, but it is an improvement!
Spit Flame -> Chromium, the Mutable -> Primevals' Glorious Rebirth -> Board the Weatherlight -> Ajani's Influence -> Disdainful Stroke -> The Mirari Conjecture -> Mortify / Nature's Spiral -> Divination -> Expansion // Explosion -> Mox Amber -> Vona, Butcher of Magen -> Sanguine Sacrament -> Smothering Tithe / Prying Bracers / Plains
Edit: Okay, here's a way to add a lot more white mana. We use Captain Lannery Storm. Of course, he only gets one, and he's Legendary, so we use Helm of the Host. At the beginning of combat, we create a nonlegendary token copy, then we can use Quasiduplicate to make many copies of him. Attack with them all, get lots of white mana, and then finish off the enemy with a huge Banefire.
That gets us to 2^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^^^(5X+74)/2). That puts us ahead of the Polyraptor deck!
Edit: Okay, I guess it's about time we addressed the problem of how we are going to shuffle cards back into our deck. I thought for a while that we could handle the problem with a couple of Junktrollers, since we could put one in the graveyard using Spit Flame, shuffle it back into the library with Junktroller, and draw it again with Board the Weatherlight. But, that would mean all of our uses of Junktroller would be used up just in putting Junktroller back in the library. So to recycle Junktroller, we need to either untap it, make a copy of it, or recycle it by putting it back in our hand or into our library.
We can animate Junktroller, then make a copy of it with Quasiduplicate, but redrawing Quasiduplicate requires Divination, which is way up the chain. Similarly for Devious Cover-Up, which as an instant requires us to use The Mirari Conjecture to get it back. We need to fetch Primevals' Glorious Rebirth from the library using Board the Weatherlight, so we want to be able to shuffle cards into our library by Board the Weatherlight at the latest, in order not to lose layers. Anyone have any ideas?
As far as what still has me confused as to why it’s just a single layer, I’ll bring up WBG and accelerate again. While you graciously explained a lot of things you never really touched on these. If we cast accelerate we get draws in an amount that scales to our current board state when we cast it. This allows for many CC casts via riftsweeper. This should be a layer if i understand layers correctly. Also given X life(maybe we gained x during set up before we could really get up and running and couldn’t take full advantage until now type of scenario) and having the YB loop or casting/bouncing WBG we will always choose the YB loop as it is significantly more potent. My question tho is in both the case of WGB and accelerate we do get a layer from those because of the added casts we will get(CC or WBG), and bargain is better than both by a wide margin. So is my YB loop just an extremely strong layer? Is that even a thing? There seem to be pretty concerte thresholds that layers need to meet, and very defined things tend to be defined in both meeting and exceeding them, so I feel like if YB is definitely better than a play that meets the layer requirements that it’s a bit harder to define. The only thing I knew of was either a) stages or b) multiple layers. The YB loop scales both cast potency(each cast we update to effect the next) and also draw potency(our final update of bracers before we activate YB again to draw), where the other cards only scale casts.
Again a bit of an apology for being a bit testy and a humble thank you for being as patient as you have been.
Also, that std deck is coming along very nicely!
I did not address Accelerate specifically, so let's talk about it now. So with the Harness the Storm combo, drawing a single instant/sorcery for which you can implement the Harness the Storm combo allows you to cast it and implement Layer 5. (Since we get many casts from the graveyard via Harness the Storm, and each spell cast implements Layer 4 in your setup.) Actually, I'm not sure how WBG and Accelerate are supposed to interact, they seem like completely separate things. Paying one life to WBG will bounce it back to you hand, and you can play it to implement Layer 4. Obviously not good at all when you have Yawgmoth's Bargain. I'm not sure how you are setting up Accelerate - I assume you have a way of putting cards from your graveyard into you library, so then Accelerate would go infinite with two copies since each one could draw the other. So I will suppose that you just have one copy, so the Harness the Storm combo is off the table. In that case, one casting of Accelerate will draw many cards, and each card draw is at Layer 5, so casting Acclerate is at Layer 6. Similarly, Yawgmoth's Bargain with many copies of Illusionist's Bracers gets you many card draws, so it too is at Layer 6 for the payment of one life. This goes to show that you need to be specific when talking about these things - questions like "is that a layer?" or "is Yawgmoth's Bargain better than Accelerate?" are a little vague and require clarifying what is actually meant. Casting one Accelerate and paying one life to Yawgmoth's Bargain both draw many cards, so both are at layer 6. So in that sense they are the same. But, if you have X life, and pay life one at a time, each time updating the number if IBs on YB, then paying all X life is Layer 7. So, paying X life to YB is one layer better than one single casting of Accelerate.
Note that, if you didn't update update the IBs on YB between each payment of one life, then paying X life would still be Layer 6, because of the multiplicative effect thing I was talking about earlier. So, updating is indeed better.
For the quantities thing - a quantity can be any number of things that you have, like number of creatures on the battlefield, amount of life you have, amount of green mana you have, number of counters on a particular permanent, or number of a particular ability on the stack. You need some types of quantities to implement layers - for example, in your deck you have:
Quantity 1: Number of Doubling Seasons
Quantity 2: Number of Illusionist Bracers triggers for a Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
Quantity 3: Number of counters on a Runaway Steam-Kin
Quantity 4: Number of Inexorable Tides
Quantity 5: Number of Thousand-Year Storm copies for Cackling Counterpart
Quantity 6: Number of Harness the Storm triggers for Cackling Counterpart
Quantity 7: Number of Illusionist Bracers triggers for Yawgmoth's Bargain
Quantity 8: Amount of life
So you've set up eight quantities, and you can reduce one to greatly increase the one before it. You can resolve one Vitu-Ghazi trigger to exponentially increase the number of Doubling Seasons. You can use 12 Runaway Steam-Kin tokens to pay for activating Vitu-Ghazi, triggering all the Illusionist Bracers, and after all the creation of Doubling Seasons you can make more Illusionist Bracers and attach them to Vitu-Ghazi. You can resolve an Inexorable Tide trigger to populate many Runaway Steam-Kins, and they all get counters boosted by the number of Doubling Seasons. So the "decrease N by a little to increase N-1 by our ever-increasing number" paradigm is set up correctly. So you get 7 layers with what you have so far.
Now, you can get a lot of layers in this fashion. Our Vintage record is 417 layers, and I made a Commander deck that reached into the mid 600s. But, there are only so many that you can make, because there are only finitely many distinct cards and interactions between cards that exist. Perhaps 1000 is possible, especially if we raise the card limit above 100, but I don't think a million is possible. Unless we move to a new paradigm.
The new paradigm is to somehow be able to set up X quantites, for theoretically _any_ number X. Of course, we won't be able to reach any X in our non-infinite deck, but the point is to not be limited by anything except the resource that we have X of and are converting into layers. So the X needs to be, at least theoretically, unlimited.
The idea that we had was for our quantities to be abilities on the stack. Now, there are only finitely many _different_ abilities in Magic, we had to reuse the same type of ability arbitrarily many times. So my setup was to have alternating types of abilites on the stack. So we could have a group of Psychic Battle triggers, then a group of Bloodbond March triggers, then PB triggers, etc. And each one could be of varying size, so each one could be a quantity.
So that's the type of setup that you need. Yes, you have some quantities, but each involve a different card. (Some different quantities involve the same card, like Illusionist Bracers on both Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage and Yawgmoth's Bargain. But still, there are only finitely many card combinations that you can make.) To make a stage, you would need to set up something like the groups of different abilities that I mentioned above. This is not an easy task at all, that's why there are fundamentally only two (maybe three) examples of it.
gain me anything more on the layer scale. It seems like maybe it does by your last explaining the layers of my deck but maybe I missed something. It seems like just having access to any draw when I can loop CC/riftsweeper is worth a layer and then the ability to update YB draw power is another. Being able to update many times doesn’t get me a stage but it does get another layer. Am I understanding this correctly?
(I’m gonna repost the original 20 cards here so it’s easier to refernace as it’s a few pages back now)
As far as the quantities end of things in the stage stuff: that makes a bunch of sense then. My only thing to point out is that if we start my YB loop, even with no mana I will get mana quite quickly and when I have the mana I can use it in between pretty much any trigger to create all sorts of varying quantities pretty much at will via my populate ability. Each copy the populate ability resolve separately and can make well pretty much anything that isn’t on the stack. I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit. I can just kinda make more quantities as a result of my setup. Normally I would just choose to max out certain ones(DS for example) but I could do all sorts of weird stuff like making weird amounts of bracers and equipping the to different guildmages(I normally only use 1 but have many if I want to abuse that fact). Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively. The amount of quantities is actually super easy to manipulate because of the way the populate ability was powered up(waves of many single populate’s instead of just 1 massively powerful one). An interesting 2 cards to add to this mix would be leonin shikari and puresteel paladin. If we do this we can pull hammer of nazahn and the ability to create varying quantities becomes simpler and the maximization of bracers usage becomes just moving them all whenever we need to onto whatever we want to use. In the case of creating quantities we can again move bracers around rather arbitrarily if we are just looking for different quantities. As a perfect example we could have 2 guildmages getting ready to populate. One has all the bracers, one has none. So we activate one and then the other in response. Holding priority we move 1 bracers from the one with them onto the one without any. Then still in response we activate each again and go from 2 quantitates to 4. We hold priority again and move another bracers and repeat to go to 6. Repeat to go to 8 etc etc until we have equal amounts on each. This creates a tower of different quantities of abilities B/2(or is it just B) tall where B is our amount of bracers we started with. I’m guessing this wouldn’t do much if we just do it mid resolution of something but we could do it as set up preparation to get a bunch more quantities before we do start putting stuff on the stack.
gain me anything more on the layer scale. It seems like maybe it does by your last explaining the layers of my deck but maybe I missed something. It seems like just having access to any draw when I can loop CC/riftsweeper is worth a layer and then the ability to update YB draw power is another. Being able to update many times doesn’t get me a stage but it does get another layer. Am I understanding this correctly?
Original 20 cards
1 black lotus
2 show and tell
3 omniscience
4 yawgmoth’s bargain
5 opalesence
6 mycosynth lattice
7 dual nature
8 doubling season
9 runaway steam-kin
10 painter’s servant
11 vitu-ghazi guildmage
12 vedelkan orrery
13 karn, silver golem
14 hammer of nazahn
15 illusionist’s bracers
16 thousand-year storm
17a cackling counterpart (bracer, equip all to YB)
18 precursor golem
19 arcane adaptation
17b cackling counterpart(from graveyard)
20 riftsweeper
As far as the quantities end of things in the stage stuff: that makes a bunch of sense then. My only thing to point out is that if we start my YB loop, even with no mana I will get mana quite quickly and when I have the mana I can use it in between pretty much any trigger to create all sorts of varying quantities pretty much at will via my populate ability. Each copy the populate ability resolve separately and can make well pretty much anything that isn’t on the stack. I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit. I can just kinda make more quantities as a result of my setup. Normally I would just choose to max out certain ones(DS for example) but I could do all sorts of weird stuff like making weird amounts of bracers and equipping the to different guildmages(I normally only use 1 but have many if I want to abuse that fact). Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively. The amount of quantities is actually super easy to manipulate because of the way the populate ability was powered up(waves of many single populate’s instead of just 1 massively powerful one). An interesting 2 cards to add to this mix would be leonin shikari and puresteel paladin. If we do this we can pull hammer of nazahn and the ability to create varying quantities becomes simpler and the maximization of bracers usage becomes just moving them all whenever we need to onto whatever we want to use. In the case of creating quantities we can again move bracers around rather arbitrarily if we are just looking for different quantities. As a perfect example we could have 2 guildmages getting ready to populate. One has all the bracers, one has none. So we activate one and then the other in response. Holding priority we move 1 bracers from the one with them onto the one without any. Then still in response we activate each again and go from 2 quantitates to 4. We hold priority again and move another bracers and repeat to go to 6. Repeat to go to 8 etc etc until we have equal amounts on each. This creates a tower of different quantities of abilities B/2(or is it just B) tall where B is our amount of bracers we started with. I’m guessing this wouldn’t do much if we just do it mid resolution of something but we could do it as set up preparation to get a bunch more quantities before we do start putting stuff on the stack.
Whoops, I just realized that in that last quantity list Quantity 5, the number of TYS copies of CC, shouldn't be there, since copies of CC do not trigger the Inexorable Tides, only casting of CCs do. So there are 7 quantities to correspond to the 7 layers.
I dunno, it's hard for me to respond to your assertions because you are being very vague. You say things like "I don’t think it would be all that hard to set up lots(maybe even X) different quantities that could then be further manipulated as we saw fit." There's a big difference between having lots of quantities, and having X quantities. If each of your layers involves having a different card, then you could set up maybe 30 or so layers, but there's no way to get a googolplex layers, for example. How would you set up a structure of X layers if you have X life? What would those layers be, and how would they perform exactly how we need them to? You need to be specific, otherwise there's not much I can say.
"Again not claiming anything just pointing out that just because I have the 8 quantities u list doesn’t mean I am stuck on only having access to those 8 exclusively." - You do have more then 7 quantities, but you have 7 layers, because you can set up 7 quantities that work the way we need them too: we can reduce quantity 2, to increase quantity 1 exponentially, and we can reduce quantity N to update quantity N-1. You can make other quantities, like making lots of Karn, Silver Golems or other support cards, but they don't fit in to the sequence of layers. If you disagree, how many layers do you think you have, and what are they?
Also, you mention how you can manipulate quantities as you see fit - that's actually very bad for the layer system. In the layer system, it is important that you _cannot_ use a lower quantity to increase a higher one. If you can, the thing goes infinite. So if you have a bunch of quantities, but you can just move stuff around between any of them, you won't get layers that way. That's why it's actually hard to get lots of layers, you have to watch out for those pesky infinites.
P.S. did you see my question at the bottom of the last page?
Mox Amber can also tap for white thanks to Teferi, your loop goes infinite. (100+ life costs 2 white and 2 white costs 14 life), swap for a blue guild locket?
As for how to reshuffle in standard, probably Gaea's Blessing being milled to a cheap explore or surveil source something like Tomb Robber, though wouldn't just casting it be too powerful? hmm.
I think some of this tech can also help the Polyraptor deck as well, Teferi, Time Raveler hadn't even been spoiled yet.
First of all I tend to think from a more conceptual standpoint rather than pure math, so while my “layers” may kind of line up they may not. This is just how I think of them in the attempt to power up my board state(I tried to list them in terms of power but I might need to rearrange a few).
1 - ability to compound my token making(doubling season)
2 - ability to make a token copy of any permanent I control. (There are some restrictions(0 cmc) and hoops I have to jump through(karn+token maker) but this is the jist)
3 - ability to make mana(restriction: I have to be casting a spell currently)
4 - ability to draw cards 1 at a time (restriction: I need life to do it)
5 - ability to allow me access to more than 60 cards(riftsweeper) (restriction: I need to be able to exile cards to get them back)
6 - ability to spread targeted spells to my team(golem/arcane adaptation) (restriction(?): I need them to benefit me?)
7 - ability to update all abilities at instant speed, even while some of them are being resolved. (Restriction(?): I only have so many abilities to update?)
So looking at my own abilities I may take dual nature out of my list and replace it with mirrorworks, just to clean up the awkwardness of getting a token I can animate w/ karn to then populate with guildmage.
Interestingly if I add boom reflection and cradle of vitality these would each add a layer.
8 - ability to modify life gain amounts
9 - ability to turn life gain events into mana production
Interestingly a team scaling life gain spell wouldn’t register as a layer for me. It’s more just a straight resource and not a compounding layer as my description of my layers already takes both the life gained and the ability to compound and repurpose it already into consideration (assuming I have BR and CoV).
Also interestingly thousand-year storm doesn’t really count as layer in my through process. As u had mentioned before I don’t really gain a lot from copies of spells(unless it scales to my team via PG) other than the casting triggers so until I gain something substantial from TYS I might be able to cut it.
So my thought process puts me a few layers above the 4/5 layers from my original 20 card set up you had described, but as I can easily see it’s nowhere near being a x->x layer type set up. Again it may just be how I conceptualize things that causes the issues or it maybe that I’m thinking I’m 7 layers deep but starting at true addition rather than starting at x^x^x, which is where u start even considering things layers to begin with.
So for example, your 8 and your 9 could certainly be layers in different chains, but they couldn't both be layers in the same layer chain. The reason is increasing your life gain doesn't case Cradle of Vitality to trigger any more, it just triggers on any life gain event. We're going for the maximum possible length layer chain, and BR and CoV can't be in the same chain.
Also, your 5 and your 7 don't count as layers, they are more support abilities. Riftsweeper allows you to save Cackling Counterpart from exile, so that you can draw it with Yawgmoth's Bargain. But in and of itself, Riftsweeper doesn't allow you to draw CC many times. Yes, with the help of Riftsweeper, an activation of Yawgmoth's Bargain with many IBs on it will be able to draw CC many times, and that is why an activation of YB with IBs on it counts as the layer above a casting (or two) of CC. But, if you count activating YB as a layer, and also count activating Riftsweeper as a layer, you're overcounting.
Similary for 7, having the ability to cast spells with flash in an enabler, it allows you to do things the way you are supposed to, but it doesn't do anything on its own. So it doesn't count as a layer.
So, it looks like your conception of layer is rather different from how we have defined it. Again, each layer has to iterate the previous one X times. So your layers look like
Layer 1: creating a token with many Doubling Seasons
Layer 2: Activating a Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage with many IBs
Layer 3: Resolving a Runaway Steam-Kin to get many counters
Layer 4: Casting Cackling Counterpart to trigger many RSKs
Layer 5: Activating a Yawgmoth's Bargain with many IBs
So each activation of YB will taking X to 2^^^^^X