Wow, that is a huge find! If we can get stages just from creatures that can tap or sacrifice to bounce themselves, I can easily see 15-20+ stages.
I just started analyzing the deck, but looking at Nectar Faerie, what is the source of the black mana? Imprinting Nectar Faerie on Chrome Mox doesn't seem like it will work, because we need to imprint Nectar Faerie on Soul Foundry.
Also, Willow Priestess can pay for the green mana one for one, but what about the two colorless mana?
Nectar Faerie gets imprinted on Chrome Mox. Making tokens of Nectar Faerie is useless because the original can target itself anyway.
I didn't actually find a lot of creatures that tap to target specifically only other copies of themself, and there is not a lot of sacrificing that has restricted targeting that includes copies of the same card so the layercount might not get as high as you think at first.
However I just noticed that my green+colorless mana stage doesn't work. I tried to bounce three creatures at the same time, since I couldn't find good targeting for just Patron of the Orochi. But the order of the Bloodbond March triggers doesn't cooperate for that so its not an Ackermann stage. Down to 10 unless it can be salvaged somehow.
Ah, I see. It has to target another creature of the same type, or else you could just cast the original and tap it to target itself. Too bad Soul Foundry doesn't give haste the way Mimic Vat does.
Can you describe why the green+colorless mana stage doesn't work? It's possible to bounce three creatures in the same Ackermann combo. Say you have a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack for creature A, and that you have green creatures A, B, and C in your hand. Let's also say we can spend a green to target a green creature, and we have at least two Psychic Battles. We can imprint creature A on Chrome Mox, allowing us to get a green mana. Bring it back to the graveyard somehow, and use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield. Cast and counter creature B, and use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield, then use it. Do the same for creature C. Then we can spend the green mana to bring it all three back you your hand. Let the Bloodbond March triggers for B and C resolve without incident, then we are back to the same situation but with one less Bloodbond March trigger for creature A.
Some creatures that target other creatures of the same type:
If you put Splinter Twin on Patron of the Orochi with Mirror Gallery out, that's an easy infinite by itself. Does this idea offer any other workable sequence at the bottom?
lijil's original deck doesn't have Mirror Gallery, so at least that works. But yeah, it would be nice to change the bottom around, not least because the current first stage uses up both green mana and green creatures, when we'd like to use them separately.
We need something that creates token copies. Mimic Vat doesn't work because it will go infinite with the creatures that can target creatures of the same type. What else?
Prospective deck, with an artifact stage added: (We can get rid of Mirror Gallery and Baron Sengir to solve the above problem)
I think my green stage breaks down when trying to save up mana working down the stack. Since we need 3 mana from it we need 3 psychic battle triggers left over and under those come a bunch of Bloodbond march triggers. When we are here the first time there are triggers for all three creatures so we can exile and return to battlefield all of them to get that mana without a problem. But after that there are only triggers for one type remaining, so the next time only that one can return from exile without additional casts that would require extra Bounces before the discard.
I have not found any good alternatives to Patron of the Orochi at the bottom. I'm not the best at searching through the cardpool, seeing that I missed a bunch of "t:target another" cards, but I have tried a bunch of different setups and the Patron is the best I've found by far.
Anaba Ancestor seems perfect, I completely missed that one.
Arashin Foremost - given that we want to store the tokens for later use leaves the Battlefield, sacrifice and tap are the things to look for.
Any Artifact Creatures would go infinite with Soul Foundry. Targeting Artifacts is currently free and there has to be at least a cheap way to reset the Chrome Mox. Prototype Portal can't be used for the same reason.
Edit: Nevermind about the artifacts. Deedlit11's way of inserting them low enough seems to work.
I think the green stage breaks down when trying to save up mana working down the stack. Since we need 3 mana from it we need 3 psychic battle triggers left over and under those come a bunch of Bloodbond march triggers. When we are here the first time there are triggers for all three creatures so we can exile and return to battlefield all of them to get that mana without a problem. But after that there are only triggers for one type remaining, so the next time only that one can return from exile without additional casts that would require extra Bounces before the discard.
Oh, is it because of the green + 2 colorless mana? Why not just add a source for colorless mana, like Mana Echoes? That would mean we just need one green mana, so my scenario above works.
Arashin Foremost - given that we want to store the tokens for later use leaves the Battlefield, sacrifice and tap are the things to look for.
Any Artifact Creatures would go infinite with Soul Foundry. Targeting Artifacts is currently free and there has to be at least a cheap way to reset the Chrome Mox. Prototype Portal can't be used for the same reason.
I got rid of the Relic Barrier, so no more free targeting artifacts. Instead Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer will be used to target artifacts, which takes care of all stages except the first stage, where we add in Elvish Spirit Guide to produce the needed green mana. I think that works, but by all means tell me if it doesn't.
As long as the Willow Priestess has more than 1 target card and the Chrome Mox resets are free it could be used to generate more than 1 green mana. That's why I tried to make the colorless relevant. Your idea of using the spirit guide in this stage and get the artifact bounce in the next seems to neatly get rid of that Problem while adding another stage. (Now just needs some free colorless)
I hope that really works out as it seems to with artifact targeting exactly in the right place.
Multiple Soul Foundry doesn't work for storing the tokens: If the imprinted card is gone due to Riftsweeper they can't create copy anymore.
Wait, how much sustainable green mana can we generate with multiple green creatures? If we can generate 3 green mana per payment to Willow Priestess, then your original idea would work. If we generate 3 green mana initially, but then only 1 green mana at a time from then on, then adding a colorless source should work. (I know Elvish Spirit Guide solves the problem, but I want to know this for the future.) I believe the answer is that we get one sustainable green mana.
It generates one green mana per green nontoken creature. The Problem for using that in the Ackermann stage that uses 3 creatures is that the Bloodbond March triggers don't stack up in the right order. (We'd need A,B,C,A,B,C instead of A,A,B,B,C,C).
I don't think your green stage handles the retrieval of Elvish Spirit Guide sufficiently. Bouncing Riftsweeper costs the green that was just generated, and the Shriekhorn needs an artifact bounce. Any ideas for that?
Edit: Ah wait. The Riftsweeper gets bounce using the same ability activation that bounced the Elvish Spirit Guide. Altar of Dementia can be used for milling. The Riftsweeper can always be sacrifice and brought back with a Bloodbond March trigger when the Spirit guide needs to move from library to graveyard
Right, so because of that problem, we don't actually get one green mana per green nontoken creature in the long run. The question is, how much green mana do we get?
It looks like we can get at least n mana per two activations of "target green creature". We can cast and counter everything and put all the creatures on the battlefield where all the creatures have Bloodbond March triggers, activate the targeting once to bring them back to hand, imprint them all, put them back in the graveyard, use the Bloodbond March triggers to put them back on the battlefield, then use a second activation of targeting to bring them back to you hand, where we can start over again. So we basically get n/2 mana per activation, or 1 mana per activation if n=1.
The question is, is that the best we can do, or is there some method that is more efficient than that?
I filled out the deck with some layers at the end using a previous construction:
I guess you can say that you get one green mana "in the long run", but that doesn't really matter because the excess green mana can be used to restart the process whenever its needed.
If it only costs 1 green you'd go infinite by using the second target just like you use the second target in the transition between different color stages - except that now it also exiles for the right color. Instead of using up the lower level psychic battle trigger layer to restart the process use some of that mana to generate new psychic battle triggers.
Note that it is possible to get Ackermann stages using activation costs other than one if all targets have the same name, as in Plopfills original example. (Fungal Bloom, 2 Woodland Changeling) In that case the Bloodbond March triggers return both cards so the ordering of those doesn't kill the Ackermann.
On the deck: I think it still needs a Grip of Chaos so that a single ability activation can bounce up to 4 targets. That is needed during the green stage to bounce Elvish Spirit Guide + Riftsweeper both when activating the ability and when getting back down to the triggers of the ability in the stack. Also in the artifact stage for Copper Myr + Soul Foundry. I guess when activating the ability its enough to bounce only the guide/myr so bouncing 3 targets would be enough. So just a second Psychic Battle would do.
Is there a way to copy that with Splinter Twin and replaying that enchantment on Bloodbond March afterwards? Seems dangerous because a reuseable aura can target any creature.
The next goal should probably be to add an Anaba Ancestor stage.
For Anaba Ancestor, the transition at the bottom should be easy, as we can use Chrome Mox and we have a few possible colors. At the top is the problem. I don't know anything that targets Minotaurs besides Anaba Ancestor, so targeting Spirits should be the way to go. Iname as One or Iname, Life Aspect seem like good choices to transition perhaps to Legendary, except they're green. Then we have Kitsune Diviner. Being a Fox doesn't help; being a Cleric, the only thing I can think of is Wandering Mage, which targets Clerics, but also targets Wizards, and we need Wizards later for Paragon of Gathering Mists.
But wait, there's also Celestial Gatekeeper. Celestial Gatekeeper went infinite in previous versions with Minion Reflector or Dual Nature, but I don't think it does in this version since token copies are no longer free. So we can transition from Anaba Ancestor to Kitsune Diviner to Celestial Gatekeeper to Soraya the Falconer. I think that works.
Hmm, to prevent Celestial Gatekeeper from going infinite we also need to prevent the card from leaving and reentering the graveyard for cheap before the ability resolves. Otherwise Psychic battle could redirect to the new instance of the card and then it really does return itself. But currently that doesn't seem to be a problem. Nice transition.
That said, I think we might need something extra to ensure that we keep winning all those Psychic Battle Triggers and it can't just move any card from graveyard to library because of the above. Beginning back in the Green stage the only thing that gets put into the Library by Riftsweeper is the Elvish Spirit Guide, which can't be there when we want to target it with the trigger. But other than that the Library is probably empty due to Altar of Dementia. Adding a Progenitus would keep a card in there.
If Progenitus is necessary for Psychic Battle, it's probably better just to go entirely Christmasland and take two Grip of Chaoses, unless we wind up with an extra slot that we don't really need for anything. In the writeup we can point out that luck can be reduced by switching back to Psychic Battle.
I figured I would report on some failed attempts, in case someone might make something of these ideas. I thought that there might be quite a few cards of the form "sacrifice to target a card of the same type", since we don't need the word "another" in this case, but I only found a few cards that didn't target all creatures:
For Army Ants and Keldon Arsonist, I thought perhaps Arbor Dryad might be used, but unfortunately Arbor Dryad isn't a creature spell, so no Bloodbond March triggers.
Brass-Talon Chimera seems suitable to be used before artifacts, but then we can't use Chrome Mox, so we can't use something like Woodland Changeling to transition to green mana. I'm not sure how to transition out of Chimeras otherwise.
Firewake Sliver seemed promising, but it can't be used both for the Ackermann stage and as a transitional card, so I think we need another sliver. But then, the other sliver would get Firewake Sliver's ability, so each time we bounced both slivers we would be able to imprint them both and get two more targeting abilities, which would go infinite.
Wave Elemental could go near the end before a flying creature I suppose, but it doesn't play well with Paragon of Gathering Mists
Another possible source for improvements is near the end, where we could have multiple "target creature" affects with different kinds of protection to keep things nicely ordered. For example, we could follow the Paragons with a red card with protection from red, targeted by a black card; then a black card with protection from black, targeted by a white card; then Stillmoon Cavalier and Deadapult.
Anyway I compiled a list of creatures that don't get excluded by the Paragons:
but I haven't managed to make anything work. One idea was to use Beasts of Bogardan with Ravenous Beloth and Slaughter, but if we separate the sacrifice from the targeting, there's nothing to stop us from sacrificing the original, bringing it back and targeting it. Another idea was to use Cemetary Gate with Flamewright, which would have been nice except that Flamewright can create its own creatures with defender.
I also thought of using some life payment activated ability to target Stillmoon Cavalier, then follow that with Mistmeadow Skulk. But I didn't find a life payment ability that gets past Stillmoon Cavalier's protection, and I couldn't find an Ackermann stage for Mistmeadow Skulk anyway.
that frees up the targeting of green for later and hopefully lets us add the green paragon.
But the target legendary destroys some of the current stage setups. Specifically missing Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer makes it hard to transition into the artifact stage and Soraya the Falconer means the transition into minotaurs doesn't work.
Still in that direction might be an opening for stage 14.
Nice idea, although losing Slobad and Soraya is problematic. For Slobad, we can use Gremlin Mine as a replacement targeting Copper Myr, and then we can transition using something that targets artifacts. I don't know how to replace Soraya though; it was hard enough connecting Anaba Ancestor the first time!
We also can't use Devoted Hero, although that can be switched around I imagine.
Patron/Vassal's Duty/Boreal Druid is no good: one mana is worth a few bounces, and each bounce is worth several untaps of both Boreal Druid and Bloodbond March. That yields unlimited snow mana and Bloodbond March tokens.
I tried the Gremlin mine with Hoard-Smelter Dragon but the red artifact creature that would bounce cannot imprint for Chrome Mox. I guess we need moor transition cards so that the card that gets exiled for mana has the secondary ability to target artifacts.
Something like Anaba Ancestor <- Gibbering Kami, Air Servant would work to transition from blue into Anaba Ancestor (Assuming that black mana is used somewhere lower). The target flying then kills the last stage with Stillmoon Cavalier but since that uses the all creatures targeting I feel that should be possible to replace.
Edit: Woah, good point about the Boreal Druid, I forgot we can't have green tappers (which even was my original reason to have the green paragon excluded).
Sinking Feeling + Splinter Twin + any of the Paragons goes infinite. Well not quite it still needs one colorless per untap But I doubt you can build a good deck that cant use an untapped paragon token to generate a colorless.
I was inspired by the Beast token stage that Deedlit11 almost had earlier:
using Cradle of Vitality instead of Slaughter the targeting trigger follows the sacrifice without the opportunity to resolve older triggers to bring the beast back first. Beasts of Bogardan has the proper protections to insert the stage before the Deadapult.
The problem now is that Ravenous Baloth is a beast itself and lacks the proper protection: It is green so our current green stage can target it.
I think I managed stage 14 using that target on gain life trigger: sacrificing clerics is the key. Of course that required reshuffling in the lower stages but I think everything works:
Tbh I have no idea how the start up, or those upper layers work. I'm pretty sure Invoke Prejudice can't be used though. For it to counter blue creatures we need to get rid of Opalescence but when we do that the Splinter Twin falls off and dies.
And one more edit: I just realized the stage doesn't work because Beloved Chaplain has protection from creatures and both Searing Meditation and Deadapult are of course creatures >_<
Oh well, at least I found some alternate chaining for the other stages.
I'm sure there's a fix, although I don't see it immediately. We could replace that stage with Slavering Nulls / Boneknitter, but that messes up Deadapult. Or we could go
It looks like the cleric stage doesn't work because enchantments are creatures, and we can't bounce Opalescence because then Splinter Twin would fall off of Bloodbond March. But what if we could protect Bloodbond March somehow?
At first I thought of Oubliette, but that targets a creature, so if we can keep bouncing it then it's too powerful. But what about phasing? We can put Vanishing on Bloodbond March, phase it out when needed, then cast Time and Tide to bring it back in again when we recast Opalescence. Izzet Guildmage can copy Time and Tide at the cost of two mana.
I think that will work, but we still need to fix Godtracker of Jund to post a working deck.
Edit: what other options for red are there? I know there's Dwarves, Goblins, and Barbarians. There are other options for the post-artifact stage, for example Elf Replica.
Edit#2: I believe I've worked it out. So the following should be 14 stages:
I just started analyzing the deck, but looking at Nectar Faerie, what is the source of the black mana? Imprinting Nectar Faerie on Chrome Mox doesn't seem like it will work, because we need to imprint Nectar Faerie on Soul Foundry.
Also, Willow Priestess can pay for the green mana one for one, but what about the two colorless mana?
I didn't actually find a lot of creatures that tap to target specifically only other copies of themself, and there is not a lot of sacrificing that has restricted targeting that includes copies of the same card so the layercount might not get as high as you think at first.
However I just noticed that my green+colorless mana stage doesn't work. I tried to bounce three creatures at the same time, since I couldn't find good targeting for just Patron of the Orochi. But the order of the Bloodbond March triggers doesn't cooperate for that so its not an Ackermann stage. Down to 10 unless it can be salvaged somehow.
Can you describe why the green+colorless mana stage doesn't work? It's possible to bounce three creatures in the same Ackermann combo. Say you have a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack for creature A, and that you have green creatures A, B, and C in your hand. Let's also say we can spend a green to target a green creature, and we have at least two Psychic Battles. We can imprint creature A on Chrome Mox, allowing us to get a green mana. Bring it back to the graveyard somehow, and use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield. Cast and counter creature B, and use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield, then use it. Do the same for creature C. Then we can spend the green mana to bring it all three back you your hand. Let the Bloodbond March triggers for B and C resolve without incident, then we are back to the same situation but with one less Bloodbond March trigger for creature A.
Some creatures that target other creatures of the same type:
Anaba Ancestor
Arashin Foremost
Baron Sengir
Fatestitcher (and other creatures that can target other creatures)
Mad Auntie
Gremlin Mine, Dispeller's Capsule, Sylvok Replica, Goblin Replica
and the Paragons of course. Also, we have Balthor the Stout, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, and Olivia Voldaren, but those use colored mana to activate.
Inserting Baron Sengir in:
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Willow Priestess
6 Nectar Faerie
7 Bloodthrone Vampire
8 Baron Sengir
9 Empress Galina
10 Empress Galina
10 Wall of Vapor
11 Wall of Stone
12 Ali Baba
13 Sokenzan Renegade
14 Mercenary Informer
16 Mad Auntie
17 Lowland Oaf
18 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
19 Wilderness Hypnotist
20 Paragon of Gathering Mists
21 Norritt
22 Paragon of Open Graves
23 Lightbringer
24 Paragon of New Dawns
25 Stillmoon Cavalier
26 Deadapult
27 Soul Foundry
28 Chrome Mox
29 Cephalid Shrine
30 Cowardice
31 Psychic Battle
32 Psychic Battle
33 Grip of Chaos
35 Show and Tell
36 Omniscience
37 Enter the Infinite
38 Leyline of Anticipation
39 Opalesence
40 Hammer of Purphoros
41 March of the Machines
42 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
43 Relic Barrier
44 Shriekhorn
45 Mirror Gallery
We need something that creates token copies. Mimic Vat doesn't work because it will go infinite with the creatures that can target creatures of the same type. What else?
Prospective deck, with an artifact stage added: (We can get rid of Mirror Gallery and Baron Sengir to solve the above problem)
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Willow Priestess
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Living Wall
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Godtracker of Jund
13 Nectar Faerie
14 Bloodthrone Vampire
15 Baron Sengir
16 Empress Galina
17 Empress Galina
19 Mercenary Informer
20 Boros Recruit
21 Mad Auntie
17 Lowland Oaf
18 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
19 Wilderness Hypnotist
20 Paragon of Gathering Mists
21 Norritt
22 Paragon of Open Graves
23 Lightbringer
24 Paragon of New Dawns
25 Stillmoon Cavalier
26 Deadapult
27 Soul Foundry
28 Chrome Mox
29 Cephalid Shrine
30 Cowardice
31 Psychic Battle
32 Psychic Battle
33 Grip of Chaos
35 Show and Tell
36 Omniscience
37 Enter the Infinite
38 Leyline of Anticipation
39 Opalesence
40 Hammer of Purphoros
41 March of the Machines
42 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
44 Shriekhorn
45 Mirror Gallery
46 Prototype Portal
47 Mana Echoes
I have not found any good alternatives to Patron of the Orochi at the bottom. I'm not the best at searching through the cardpool, seeing that I missed a bunch of "t:target another" cards, but I have tried a bunch of different setups and the Patron is the best I've found by far.
Anaba Ancestor seems perfect, I completely missed that one.
Arashin Foremost - given that we want to store the tokens for later use leaves the Battlefield, sacrifice and tap are the things to look for.
Any Artifact Creatures would go infinite with Soul Foundry. Targeting Artifacts is currently free and there has to be at least a cheap way to reset the Chrome Mox.
Prototype Portal can't be used for the same reason.
Edit: Nevermind about the artifacts. Deedlit11's way of inserting them low enough seems to work.
Oh, is it because of the green + 2 colorless mana? Why not just add a source for colorless mana, like Mana Echoes? That would mean we just need one green mana, so my scenario above works.
We can "store up" Arashin Foremosts if we have multiple Soul Foundrys, which we can get if we add Prototype Portal.
I got rid of the Relic Barrier, so no more free targeting artifacts. Instead Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer will be used to target artifacts, which takes care of all stages except the first stage, where we add in Elvish Spirit Guide to produce the needed green mana. I think that works, but by all means tell me if it doesn't.
I hope that really works out as it seems to with artifact targeting exactly in the right place.
Multiple Soul Foundry doesn't work for storing the tokens: If the imprinted card is gone due to Riftsweeper they can't create copy anymore.
Good point about Soul Foundry.
I don't think your green stage handles the retrieval of Elvish Spirit Guide sufficiently. Bouncing Riftsweeper costs the green that was just generated, and the Shriekhorn needs an artifact bounce. Any ideas for that?
Edit: Ah wait. The Riftsweeper gets bounce using the same ability activation that bounced the Elvish Spirit Guide. Altar of Dementia can be used for milling. The Riftsweeper can always be sacrifice and brought back with a Bloodbond March trigger when the Spirit guide needs to move from library to graveyard
It looks like we can get at least n mana per two activations of "target green creature". We can cast and counter everything and put all the creatures on the battlefield where all the creatures have Bloodbond March triggers, activate the targeting once to bring them back to hand, imprint them all, put them back in the graveyard, use the Bloodbond March triggers to put them back on the battlefield, then use a second activation of targeting to bring them back to you hand, where we can start over again. So we basically get n/2 mana per activation, or 1 mana per activation if n=1.
The question is, is that the best we can do, or is there some method that is more efficient than that?
I filled out the deck with some layers at the end using a previous construction:
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Willow Priestess
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Living Wall
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Godtracker of Jund
13 Nectar Faerie
14 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
15 Walker of Secret Ways
16 Seahunter
17 Mercenary Informer
18 Boros Recruit
19 Mad Auntie
20 Lowland Oaf
21 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
23 Paragon of Gathering Mists
24 Norritt
25 Paragon of Open Graves
26 Lightbringer
27 Paragon of New Dawns
28 Stillmoon Cavalier
29 Deadapult
30 Soul Foundry
31 Chrome Mox
32 Invoke Prejudice
33 Cowardice
34 Psychic Battle
35 City of Traitors
36 Storm Herd
37 Omniscience
38 Minds Aglow
39 Leyline of Anticipation
40 Opalesence
41 Hammer of Purphoros
42 March of the Machines
43 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
44 Altar of Dementia
45 Mana Echoes
47 Firemind's Foresight
48 Supply // Demand
49 Psychic Trance
50 Merchant Scroll
51 Wild Ricochet
52 Elite Arcanist
53 Sinking Feeling
54 Gruul Ragebeast
55 Guilty Conscience
56 Rite of Passage
57 Corpsejack Menace
58 Phleddagrif
59 Donate
60 Djinn Illuminatus
That should be 12 Ackermann stages with 27 layers tacked on at the end.
If it only costs 1 green you'd go infinite by using the second target just like you use the second target in the transition between different color stages - except that now it also exiles for the right color. Instead of using up the lower level psychic battle trigger layer to restart the process use some of that mana to generate new psychic battle triggers.
Note that it is possible to get Ackermann stages using activation costs other than one if all targets have the same name, as in Plopfills original example. (Fungal Bloom, 2 Woodland Changeling) In that case the Bloodbond March triggers return both cards so the ordering of those doesn't kill the Ackermann.
On the deck: I think it still needs a Grip of Chaos so that a single ability activation can bounce up to 4 targets. That is needed during the green stage to bounce Elvish Spirit Guide + Riftsweeper both when activating the ability and when getting back down to the triggers of the ability in the stack. Also in the artifact stage for Copper Myr + Soul Foundry. I guess when activating the ability its enough to bounce only the guide/myr so bouncing 3 targets would be enough. So just a second Psychic Battle would do.
Is there a way to copy that with Splinter Twin and replaying that enchantment on Bloodbond March afterwards? Seems dangerous because a reuseable aura can target any creature.
The next goal should probably be to add an Anaba Ancestor stage.
But wait, there's also Celestial Gatekeeper. Celestial Gatekeeper went infinite in previous versions with Minion Reflector or Dual Nature, but I don't think it does in this version since token copies are no longer free. So we can transition from Anaba Ancestor to Kitsune Diviner to Celestial Gatekeeper to Soraya the Falconer. I think that works.
So we are up to 13 stages:
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Willow Priestess
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Living Wall
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Minotaur Aggressor
13 Anaba Ancestor
14 Kitsune Diviner
15 Celestial Gatekeeper
16 Soraya the Falconer
17 Devoted Hero
18 Nectar Faerie
19 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
20 Walker of Secret Ways
22 Mad Auntie
23 Lowland Oaf
24 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
25 Wilderness Hypnotist
26 Paragon of Gathering Mists
27 Norritt
28 Paragon of Open Graves
29 Lightbringer
30 Paragon of New Dawns
31 Stillmoon Cavalier
32 Deadapult
33 Soul Foundry
34 Chrome Mox
35 Invoke Prejudice
36 Cowardice
37 Psychic Battle
38 City of Traitors
39 Mana Echoes
40 Omniscience
41 Minds Aglow
42 Leyline of Anticipation
43 Opalesence
44 Hammer of Purphoros
45 March of the Machines
46 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
47 Altar of Dementia
48 Grip of Chaos
50 Firemind's Foresight
51 Supply // Demand
52 Psychic Trance
53 Storm Herd
54 Elite Arcanist
55 Gruul Ragebeast
56 Rite of Passage
57 Corpsejack Menace
58 Phleddagrif
59 Donate
60 Djinn Illuminatus
That said, I think we might need something extra to ensure that we keep winning all those Psychic Battle Triggers and it can't just move any card from graveyard to library because of the above. Beginning back in the Green stage the only thing that gets put into the Library by Riftsweeper is the Elvish Spirit Guide, which can't be there when we want to target it with the trigger. But other than that the Library is probably empty due to Altar of Dementia. Adding a Progenitus would keep a card in there.
I figured I would report on some failed attempts, in case someone might make something of these ideas. I thought that there might be quite a few cards of the form "sacrifice to target a card of the same type", since we don't need the word "another" in this case, but I only found a few cards that didn't target all creatures:
Army Ants, Keldon Arsonist
Brass-Talon Chimera and other Chimeras
Cautery Sliver, Firewake Sliver
Wave Elemental
For Army Ants and Keldon Arsonist, I thought perhaps Arbor Dryad might be used, but unfortunately Arbor Dryad isn't a creature spell, so no Bloodbond March triggers.
Brass-Talon Chimera seems suitable to be used before artifacts, but then we can't use Chrome Mox, so we can't use something like Woodland Changeling to transition to green mana. I'm not sure how to transition out of Chimeras otherwise.
Firewake Sliver seemed promising, but it can't be used both for the Ackermann stage and as a transitional card, so I think we need another sliver. But then, the other sliver would get Firewake Sliver's ability, so each time we bounced both slivers we would be able to imprint them both and get two more targeting abilities, which would go infinite.
Wave Elemental could go near the end before a flying creature I suppose, but it doesn't play well with Paragon of Gathering Mists
Another possible source for improvements is near the end, where we could have multiple "target creature" affects with different kinds of protection to keep things nicely ordered. For example, we could follow the Paragons with a red card with protection from red, targeted by a black card; then a black card with protection from black, targeted by a white card; then Stillmoon Cavalier and Deadapult.
Anyway I compiled a list of creatures that don't get excluded by the Paragons:
Beasts of Bogardan - red
Beloved Chaplain - creatures
Blood Baron of Vizkopa - white and black
Cemetary Gate - black
Commander Eesha - creatures
Guardian of the Guildpact - monocolored
Harbringer of Spring - non-Spirit creatures
Iridescent Angel - all colors
Minion of Leshrac - black
Mistmeadow Skulk - converted mana cost 3 or greater
Progenitus - everything
Skirk Fire Marshal - red
Spirit of the Night - black
Stillmoon Cavalier - white and black
Subterranean Spirit - red
Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts - creatures
Akki Lavarunner - red
Voice of Truth - white
Vulshok Refugee - red
but I haven't managed to make anything work. One idea was to use Beasts of Bogardan with Ravenous Beloth and Slaughter, but if we separate the sacrifice from the targeting, there's nothing to stop us from sacrificing the original, bringing it back and targeting it. Another idea was to use Cemetary Gate with Flamewright, which would have been nice except that Flamewright can create its own creatures with defender.
I also thought of using some life payment activated ability to target Stillmoon Cavalier, then follow that with Mistmeadow Skulk. But I didn't find a life payment ability that gets past Stillmoon Cavalier's protection, and I couldn't find an Ackermann stage for Mistmeadow Skulk anyway.
So, still searching...
Patron of the Orochi
Vassal's Duty
Boreal Druid
Riftsweeper
Elvish Spirit Guide
Elvish Pathcutter
that frees up the targeting of green for later and hopefully lets us add the green paragon.
But the target legendary destroys some of the current stage setups. Specifically missing Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer makes it hard to transition into the artifact stage and Soraya the Falconer means the transition into minotaurs doesn't work.
Still in that direction might be an opening for stage 14.
We also can't use Devoted Hero, although that can be switched around I imagine.
Something like Anaba Ancestor <- Gibbering Kami, Air Servant would work to transition from blue into Anaba Ancestor (Assuming that black mana is used somewhere lower). The target flying then kills the last stage with Stillmoon Cavalier but since that uses the all creatures targeting I feel that should be possible to replace.
Edit: Woah, good point about the Boreal Druid, I forgot we can't have green tappers (which even was my original reason to have the green paragon excluded).
A possible start:
Bloodbond March
Splinter Twin
Sinking Feeling
Baru, Fist of Krosa
Life and Limb
Saproling Cluster
Savage Thallid
which gets us a stage for Saprolings. I'm not sure how next to proceed; possibly add a Forest and then have something bounce that.
Another possibility is to use Hoof Skulkin, but that excludes green creatures without getting a layer first, so it doesn't look as good.
Or we could go to Oran-Rief, the Vastwood.
I was inspired by the Beast token stage that Deedlit11 almost had earlier:
using Cradle of Vitality instead of Slaughter the targeting trigger follows the sacrifice without the opportunity to resolve older triggers to bring the beast back first.
Beasts of Bogardan has the proper protections to insert the stage before the Deadapult.
The problem now is that Ravenous Baloth is a beast itself and lacks the proper protection: It is green so our current green stage can target it.
I think I managed stage 14 using that target on gain life trigger: sacrificing clerics is the key. Of course that required reshuffling in the lower stages but I think everything works:
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Trolls of Tel-Jilad
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Living Wall
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Godtracker of Jund
13 Nectar Faerie
14 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
15 Walker of Secret Ways
16 Goblin Electromancer
17 Mad Auntie
18 Goblin Burrows
19 Tidal Warrior
20 Sygg, River Guide
22 Anaba Ancestor
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Hunting Drake
25 Paragon of Gathering Mists
26 Norritt
27 Paragon of Open Graves
28 Lightbringer
29 Paragon of New Dawns
30 Beloved Chaplain
31 Starlit Sanctum
32 Searing Meditation
33 Stillmoon Cavalier
34 Deadapult
35 Soul Foundry
36 Chrome Mox
37 Cephalid Shrine
38 Cowardice
39 Grip of Chaos
40 Grip of Chaos
42 Omniscience
43 Minds Aglow
44 Leyline of Anticipation
45 Opalesence
46 Hammer of Purphoros
47 March of the Machines
48 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
49 Altar of Dementia
50 Walking Atlas
51 Nature's Revolt
52 Chaos Warp
53 Firemind's Foresight
54 ???
55 ???
56 ???
57 ???
58 ???
59 ???
60 Djinn Illuminatus
Tbh I have no idea how the start up, or those upper layers work. I'm pretty sure Invoke Prejudice can't be used though. For it to counter blue creatures we need to get rid of Opalescence but when we do that the Splinter Twin falls off and dies.
And one more edit: I just realized the stage doesn't work because Beloved Chaplain has protection from creatures and both Searing Meditation and Deadapult are of course creatures >_<
Oh well, at least I found some alternate chaining for the other stages.
I'm sure there's a fix, although I don't see it immediately. We could replace that stage with Slavering Nulls / Boneknitter, but that messes up Deadapult. Or we could go
Blazing Blade Askari
Zhalfarin Commander
Zhalfarin Commander
Devoted Hero
Nectar Faerie
Auntie's Snitch
Mad Auntie
Goblin Burrows
Aven Fogbringer
Air Servant
but I think that's one too many blue flying creatures. There's got to be a solution though.
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Willow Priestess
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Living Wall
10 Wall of Stone
11 Ali Baba
12 Minotaur Aggressor
13 Anaba Ancestor
14 Kitsune Diviner
15 Celestial Gatekeeper
16 Soraya the Falconer
17 Devoted Hero
18 Nectar Faerie
19 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
20 Walker of Secret Ways
22 Mad Auntie
23 Lowland Oaf
24 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
25 Wilderness Hypnotist
26 Paragon of Gathering Mists
27 Norritt
28 Paragon of Open Graves
29 Lightbringer
30 Paragon of New Dawns
31 Blighted Steppe
32 Cradle of Vitality
33 Stillmoon Cavalier
34 Deadapult
35 Soul Foundry
36 Chrome Mox
37 Cephalid Shrine
38 Cowardice
39 Grip of Chaos
40 Grip of Chaos
41 City of Traitors
42 Omniscience
43 Primal Surge
44 Words of Wisdom
45 Leyline of Anticipation
46 Opalesence
47 Hammer of Purphoros
48 March of the Machines
49 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
50 Altar of Dementia
51 Walking Atlas
52 Nature's Revolt
54 Firemind's Foresight
55 ?
56 ?
57 ?
58 ?
59 ?
60 Djinn Illuminatus
Edit: Duh, it's not a creature spell. Oh well.
I'd really like to have more options for black though. Are there really only Zombies and Elf/Faeries? Nah found some more:
Nectar Faerie can go to blue or white
Boneknitter, Lim-Dûl the Necromancer can go to blue or red, but messes with deadapult
Black Poplar Shaman can go to white
Dauthi Cutthroat can go to blue or white
(the go to is assuming a direct target of non-black,non-green color - there might well be longer transitions)
At first I thought of Oubliette, but that targets a creature, so if we can keep bouncing it then it's too powerful. But what about phasing? We can put Vanishing on Bloodbond March, phase it out when needed, then cast Time and Tide to bring it back in again when we recast Opalescence. Izzet Guildmage can copy Time and Tide at the cost of two mana.
I think that will work, but we still need to fix Godtracker of Jund to post a working deck.
Edit: what other options for red are there? I know there's Dwarves, Goblins, and Barbarians. There are other options for the post-artifact stage, for example Elf Replica.
Edit#2: I believe I've worked it out. So the following should be 14 stages:
2 Bloodbond March
3 Patron of the Orochi
4 Riftsweeper
5 Elvish Spirit Guide
6 Trolls of Tel-Jilad
7 Copper Myr
8 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
9 Elf Replica
10 Nectar Faerie
11 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
12 Walker of Secret Ways
13 Wall of Vapor
14 Wall of Stone
15 Ali Baba
16 Goblin Electromancer
17 Mad Auntie
18 Goblin Burrows
19 Tidal Warrior
20 Sygg, River Guide
22 Anaba Ancestor
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Hunting Drake
25 Paragon of Gathering Mists
26 Norritt
27 Paragon of Open Graves
28 Lightbringer
29 Paragon of New Dawns
30 Beloved Chaplain
31 Starlit Sanctum
32 Cradle of Vitality
33 Stillmoon Cavalier
34 Deadapult
35 Soul Foundry
36 Chrome Mox
37 Cephalid Shrine
38 Cowardice
39 Grip of Chaos
40 Grip of Chaos
41 City of Traitors
42 Omniscience
43 Primal Surge
44 Words of Wisdom
45 Leyline of Anticipation
46 Opalescence
47 Hammer of Purphoros
48 March of the Macines
49 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
50 Altar of Dementia
51 Walking Atlas
52 Vanishing
53 Time and Tide
54 Izzet Guildmage
55 Drake Familiar
56 Nature's Revolt
58 Firemind's Foresight
59 Merchant Scroll
60 Djinn Illuminatus