Hey, just want say I'm not dead, and also check that you guys are ok too. I know things have gone a little off the rails in real life, to put it mildly, and that "esoteric card game challenge" is pretty low on everybody's priority list, so I completely understand people stepping away, (I did it for a few months). But things might be settling back down (at least for me) so, fingers crossed.
Back to thinking about the challenge.
Because I'm a bit rusty with the stage mechanics, I'm going to focus on the standard challenge for now, especially as we now have full m21 spoilers.
The only cards that stood out to me from that are: Teferi, Master of Time the first PW we can activate at instant speed, shame the looting is probably too powerful. Maybe we can set it up so that the +1 leaves us stuck with a useless used PW, so we need to use the -3 to kill itself?
Feline Sovereign just the protection from Hungry Lynx without the rest. Though, the protection was the least useful part of that card.
Idol of endurance a way to turn white mana into replaying cheap creatures, not sure if this has a slot but seems both narrow and powerful.
Anyway, gonna be looking back at the standard thread.
There has been a change to the rules on linked abilities, which effect the interaction between Spellweaver Helix and Panharmonicon, which we have used before, though I don't think the current deck uses it.
Previously, when more than 2 cards were exiled to it, casting one of them allows us to copy all of rest of them. Now, I believe it will only copy one of them of our choice.
Hi, I'm just a noob whose eye was caught by this thread. I found the concept to be fascinating and fell down the rabbit hole of reading all about Knuth up-arrow notation and Conway chained arrow notation. I decided to try and take a crack at making a list, and although I'm sure it's far from the type of decks you all are making here, I was hoping someone could help me evaluate it? I didn't have the fortitude to read 124 pages of posts so please forgive me if I'm rehashing old material. I'm pretty confident that I don't have any infinite combos available in the list despite the inclusion of Equilibrium, but I could be wrong...
Edit: Added in Fiery Emancipation for more tripling.
1. Dual Nature
2. Doubling Season
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all 4 copies of each.
4. Dance of Many, (n-1 batches of DS, 1 of DN)
5. Copy Enchantment targeting Dance, same batches as above. If I'm correct, this should be better than simply making batches of DS and DN directly because the copy enchantment tokens coming into play as Dance are multiplied, and the the tokens those tokens make are multiplied again.
6. Repeat step 5 twice more, holding back one Copy Enchantment.
7. Nyxbloom Ancient
8. Tap Gaea's Cradle for lots of G.
9. Copy Enchantment, pay 1 to use Equilibrium to bounce another CE. Target Dance, same as above.
10. Repeat step 9 until one mana is left.
11. Copy Enchantment, pay 1 to use Equilibrium to bounce another CE. Target Dance. This time, make the last batch target a Nyxbloom.
12. Growth Spiral, put into play the second Gaea's Cradle and keep the untapped one.
13. Tap for more G.
14. Repeat steps 9 and 10, except use the last mana to bounce a CE and keep it in hand.
15. Play Fiery Emancipation
16. Copy Enchantment, targeting Dance. This time, make the last batch target the Emancipation.
Stage 2 - The Precursor
1. Stern Proctor. Have all of them target Opalescence.
2. Precursor Golem
3. Mirrorweave targeting Precursor.
4. After the first copy resolves, Rite of Replication targeting a Precursor.
5. Rite will copy n times for each of my creatures, where n is the number of creatures I have.
6. After the last Rite resolves, let the next Mirrorweave copy resolve, turning my new generic Golems into Precursors.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all 8 copies of Rite and Cackling Counterpart.
Stage 3 - The Hunger
1. Hungering Hydra (can be played with X=0 using Omniscience because of Xenograft for Golem and Coat of Arms)
2. Join Shields
3. Cast Mark of Mutiny and all 14 copies of Justice Strike, Inner Struggle, Wrack with Madness, and Kiku's Shadow on a golem.
4. Before any of the spells resolve, Praetor's Counsel.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other 3 copies of Counsel.
6. Still refusing to allow any spells actually resolve, Mirrorweave again targeting Hungering Hydra.
7. Stack the copies so that the first copy to resolve is targeting one of the Hungering Hydra tokens.
8. All creatures become Hungering Hydra, and the remaining copies of Mirrorweave are redundant.
9. All of the self-harm spells resolve, generating massive +1/+1 counters for all Hydras.
10. Mark of Mutiny resolves, giving more counters and Haste to all Hydras.
11. Move to combat and swing.
Thanks for humoring me, and let me know what you think! I'm sure I haven't broken any records, but maybe there's something in there that a person smarter than I can use for the better.
Welcome Jadhuin, always nice to see a new name in this challenge.
Not going to do a full analysis but can provide some pointers:
First, Dance of Many goes infinite with the other enchantments as the Dual nature copies can target the original Dance to make more tokens, so it needs to be cut/replaced.
Part 1
For step 5 its best to alternate between making more DS and more DN.
part 2
After mirrorweaving, put the opalescence back in play so the copy effects also make DN and DS. (I think there's even a more optimal way to do this, but don't want to work it out now)
part 3
All of the spells are still on the stack when you cast Praetor's Counsel so you dont get them back until the originals resolve.
Importantly, Praetor's counsel gets back the Gaea's Cradle so you can make more mana and enchantments.
Estimation (these are suuper rough and im rusty/fuzzily remembering the shortcuts of how DS+DN worked in similar decks):
DN+DS-> x^^x
copy enchantments x^^^^x (alternating DS and DN x^^^x otherwise)
green mana x->x->6
Equilibrium x->x->8
golems x->x->10
replicate x->x->13 (assuming with copies of DS and DN getting made, x->x->11 with your line)
justice x->x->14
counsel x->5->15 (assuming with remaking green mana, otherwise x->60->14)
This estimation is probably high, because things don't actually chain into each other as nicely as I'm making it.
In general its most deck efficient to only have multiple copies of the most powerful cards (latest in the combo). those extra justic strikes would be better as more self exiling twister variants.
some easy improvements would be a single Timetwister for the PC to get back, Thousand-year storm (your storm count is kinda low but you can make a bunch of copies of it TYS is just strictly better than Swarm Intelligence)
You have a bunch of resources that you are not using: any of the other colors, or life totals.
Something like Ionize to let a counsel recur itself (after adding TYS) for the cost of 2 of your 20 life.
Then a finite way to gain life and so on.
Things that are off limits include:
- Dealing damage to any creature, other than via Goblin Boom Keg
- Killing any creature or artifact we control without killing them all
- Giving any creature haste, unless it can't attack or can't be blocked
- Controlling a necromancer during a computation
- O-ring effects that can be creatures (else they can allow a necromancer to exist during a computation)
- Doing anything at instant speed that could interfere with a computation
- Returning instants from the graveyard to our hand
Resources used:
- Colourless mana
- Red mana
- Life
We'd like to now build as many layers as possible on top of the life hyperstage.
Doing so will be tricky, because firstly any resources that are permanents will be bounced by the worldpurge, and secondly because the cowardice can bounce any creature we may want to use. #3090 contains some good ideas though not all of them work.
Hmmm, I'd still like to give the old college try to see if we can get a megastage, or additional stages to the hyperstage. The first step seems to be to create a creature stage. (We don't necessarily need a creature stage to get additional stages to the hyperstage, but the previous efforts of trying to add mana stage didn't pan out; going for a creature stage seems like the next step.) I don't feel like we've really discussed this yet.
I guess if the inner stage were life-based or creature-based and didn't rely on Cowardice, and the hyperstage was mana-based using Worldfire, then there wouldn't be any unwanted bounce effects making a mana-based or creature-based stage easier
And if the inner stage was creature, we wouldn't have to do Worldpurge or Worldfire, we could do something like Jokulhaups perhaps. But an inner life stage into Worldfire could be a possibility as well.
Since computations need to be initiated by killing all of our artifacts and creatures with something like Desolation Giant or Death Pit Offering, if the inner stage is creature based then its tokens need to be hidden from this effect. Soul Sculptor can be used for this. Then the hyperstage spell needs to hit all permanents (or all nonland permanents).
Hey everyone, I'm new here and been working on this challenge for the Commander format for the last days. I'm not sure if there's not still an infinite combo hidden there, but I think it should work. If it does, I don't even know how many arrows of damage it would do...
Anyway, here's the list, commander is Horde of Notions:
Then we play Copy Enchantment, the copies we get from Doubling Season and Molten Echoes will copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes, while the original card stays a Copy Enchanment. We need that later to copy auras.
Next we start to play our creatures:
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Cloudshredder Sliver. Selvala has haste, but we need green mana. Play Dryad Arbor. Activate Selvala with every Intruder Alarm trigger from here on and gain enough mana to get us through the next steps. Soulsworn Jury can be used on our most important creatures to gain many more copies of them through Bloodbond March. Don't worry, we'll be able to retrieve him later and gain enough copies to later use him on any creature spell we play.
Play Yarok, the Desecrated, Horde of Notions, Teysa Karlov, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Tireless Tracker and World Shaper. Discard Wirewood Lodge to Chainer, kill World Shaper with Consuming Bonfire, returning the animated Lodge, get multiple copies. Since there are multiple World Shaper death triggers, we should kill the original Dryad Arbors and Wirewood Lodges with Consuming Bonfire in response, to be able to return them (Horde of Notions allows us to do that from the grave for 1 mana of every colour. We also get a bunch of Clue tokens (Doubling Season doubles those, too), which we will need later.
Cast Magus of the Candelabra and Heroe's Bane. From now on, every time a creature enters the battlefield, we will get multiple untaps from every copy of Intruder Alarm. We use every Magus to untap all our Wirewood Lodges, which untap Selvala. Selvala will grow our Heroe's Bane, to give us more mana next time.
Ok, so we double or triple pretty much everything and neither player can win or lose the game. Now it's time to play Isochron Scepter, imprinting Spiritual Visit. We activate it and copy it as often as we can with Kurkesh. The copy is cast, so we can use Splice onto Arcane with Overblaze. It now has a target and the target of the original spell is Zada, so it gets copied once for every creature we have. The copies from Thousand Year Storm all target our Heroe's Bane. Every Isochron activation will also increase our storm count since the original copy is cast.
We get lots and lots of untaps on Selvala, Heroe's Bane will grow larger and larger. Then we play Oath of Teferi and Rowan Kenrith. We cast Repeted Reverberation, which means our next loyalty ability will get copied twice as much as our Thousand-Year storm count. We ultimate Rowan Kenrith. Twice. This now copies every activated ability, including Scepter activations!
Speaking of which, we will now play Unbender Tine and untap Scepter with it, which gets copied by Rowan's ultimate ability, then we activate Scepter which gets copied again by Rowan. Also Magus of the Candelabra, Wirewood Lodge and Heroe's Bane will get copied by Rowan's ultimate.
With Lapis Lazuli Talisman out, we can now untap Unbender Tine once every time we cast a blue spell. We will cast lots of blue spells - that's what Blue Sun's Zenith is for. Every time we sac a clue, we will draw a LOT of cards, so we can recast Zenith just as often.
The other way to untap Unbender Tine is with Janjeet Sentry, for which we need energy. This will of course get copied by Rowan. We can get energy from Architect of the Untamed, Aetherwind Basker, Era of Innovation and Peema Aether-Seer.
Setup almost done. Pollenbright Wings and Celestial Mantle enchant our Heroe's Bane.
Now we play Kindred Charge, naming Sliver, cast and ultimate Teferi so that we can activate Planeswalkers at instant speed and our board is set up! The copies of the plain Copy Enchantment can copy Auras and we use that to get a few Celestial Mantles, later also Pollenbright Wings.
Stage 2: Combo
Kill the original one of every creature (not animated enchantment!) we have except for Heroe's Bane and play Magister of Worth. This will trigger a lot of times and every trigger will return all our creatures to play. In response to every trigger, we kill the original creature again.
We get a lot of World Shapers, which will return our lands, the lands will get copied by Molten Echoes and Doubling Season, this will give us a lot of Clue tokens (and also energy), which we can use to draw and cast Blue Sun's Zenith, which triggers Talisman, which untaps Unbender Tine, etc.
Unfortunately this is over quickly, so on to the next stage!
Stage 3: Attacking
We play Mage Slayer and equip Heroe's Bane, also cast Commando Raid on it and play Quest for Pure Flame. Attack with everything we have.
First things first - Mageslayer trigger. Heroe's Bane will deal a lot more damage than it has power thanks to Overblaze and lifelink from True Conviction combined with Rhox Faithmenderwill gain us a lot of life. Dealing damage will also enable us to crack Quest for Pure Flame.
We use that life to return Wydwen to our hand, discard Wydwen to Chainer to get a lot of creature replays from our grave (Chainer's ability gets copied by Rowan) and replay Magister of Worth, Magister also returns Wyden, so for the cost of 1 life we get to to repeat stage 2 over and over again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow Pathbreaker Ibex with Wine of Blood and Iron. The value of X on Pathbreaker Ibex is determined when the trigger resolves, so all our creatures are now stronger than Heroe's Bane was before. Next we let a Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin trigger resolve, so we will get just as many tokens, doubled by doubling seasons, then remember to kill them with Bonfire and transform every Goblin into a lot of Spirits. And for every untap we get from Intruder Alarm, Heroe's Bane grows. Then we let an Aetherwind Basker trigger resolve, which gives us energy to untap Unbender Tine again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow the next Pathbreaker Ibex and repeat: Pathbreaker Ibex -> Krenkro -> Aetherwind Basker until all triggers are resolved. Now we dump all mana into Heroe's Bane.
Stage 4: Combat Damage
Lifelink gives us a lot of life again to start our Wydwen-Chainer-combo.
ThenVarchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor gives our opponent a bunch of tokens, which also untap our creatures.
Next we get a lot of life from Noble Purpose triggers, but don't spend that yet - wait for Celestial Mantle and its copies to double it (which gets multiplied by Rhox Faithmender!). After all those triggers, start the Wydwen combo again.
Then, Pollenbright Wings gives us a bunch of tokens, you know what to do already.
Then we get a lot of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician untaps on our Unbender Tine.
That was the first strike damage. Now our opponent has tokens, so in addition to what we've done before, we get a lot of Commando Raid triggers. Let them resolve after the Wydwen combo, so Heroe's Bane is more powerful and deals more damage, so we gain more life from lifelink, to get more creature replays from Wydwen and Chainer. Make a token indestructible to keep it around.
We might later have to kill our own Planeswalkers and I haven't found a really good way to do this, so I've included Sword of Sinew and Steel.
Stage 5: Again!
5.1 Waves of Aggression for many, many more combat steps.
5.2 Once the last combat step is over, we play No Rest for the Wicked. It's not targeted, so it will get copied by Rowan if we sac it. Let the first copy of the ability resolve, return all creatures including Dryad Arbor to hand, which we can use to cast Waves of Aggression from the grave via retrace. Repeat the Stages 2 - 5.1 for every copy of the ability, then crack every one of the copies of No Rest for the Wicked to do the same again.
5.3 Cast Crystal Chimes and crack it. Unfortunately we don't get any copies since Chimes is and artifact and copying artifacts is off-limits for us, but the ability will get copied by Rowan's ultimate and by Kurkesh.
5.4 Cast Second Sunrise, which gets copied a bunch of times. Remember to kill the original one of every creature and animated enchantment we have so they all get returned and copied again. Every copy of Second Sunrise also returns Crystal Chimes so we can repeat everything including 5.3
5.5 Discard Surreal Memoir to Chainer. Casting this to return Second Sunrise is the next step, but we can't cast it from our hand or it would be exiled. It's not targeted, so every copy can return a Second Sunrise.
5.6 Cast Chandra Ablaze and ultimate her. This casts Surreal Memoir and repeats everything up to stage 5.5. It gets copied by Rowan's ability, too! Chandra also recasts Commando Raid and Kindred Charge. A lot of times.
5.7 Cast Nissa and return Chandra and Rowan. Her ability is targeted, so we can only return Chandra and Rowan twice (because of Oath of Teferi), but I think it's still worth it to include her. This also finally returns Rowan, so we can ultimate him a lot more often, which will really jump-start our combo.
5.8 Cast Eerie Ultimatum or Primevals' Glorious Rebirth and do it all again for all the storm count we have.
5.9 Cast Make a Wish. This isn't targeted either, so every copy of it can return Nissa and Rowan or Nissa and Chandra.
6. And again
Now we still have cards like Time Spiral or Feldon's Cane left, which will repeat every step prior to this. I've included every card I could find which does this and also gets copied by Thousand-Year Storm or Rowan (and doesn't go infinite like Metallurgic Summonings. Enchantments are off limits for this unfortunately)
7. Once more
Now we can use Holistic Wisdom to turn every sorcery we have left over and don't need into Make a Wish and later Make a Wish itself into one last copy of Eerie Ultimatum.
8. The kill
After the last combat step is over and we have nothing else left to do and our mana pool is just 3WUBRG, we equip one Abyssal Persecutor with Assault Suit, sac Opalescence to Auratog so we can keep our Thousand-Year Storm, cast Consuming Bonfire on our Abyssal Persecutor with the Assault suit, then cast Soulblast in response. After every copy of Soulblast is resolved, Abyssal Persecutor is killed and our opponent dies.
I hope there's not still an infinity combo hidden somwhere, because I've already removed a lot of potential infinites.
The deck also still has one open card slot and I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but the damage should be very high (if it works without going infinite?). So high anyway that I can't calculate it even with the arrow notation. It should be higher than any other megacombo I've seen so far unless I'm mistaken?
/Edit:
Just removed Patron Wizard because that's an infinite combo with Time Spiral or any other self exiling recursion spell. Replaced with Soulsworn Jury which is just as good once we get Magister of Worth going.
Another infinite is that a token copy of Hoard of Notions can repeatedly cast the original from the grave, killing it via legend rule, to generate mana.
You have a lot of cards/steps that basically do the same thing - e.g. casting blue spells and paying energy both individually untap the unbender time, but the impact of this is going to be dominated by whichever of those things you can do more of, making the other not really matter. It's more efficient to chain your resources together in "layers" - for example, using X to represent the amount of each resource accumulated before it, each time you cast your token maker, you get X copies of it (thanks to TYS), each of which gets you X intruder alarm triggers, each of which generates X mana with Selvala - which is 3 layers.
The other thing you want to do is scale your resources (i.e changing the value of X), so that each layer truely makes the next iteration of it better - for example, if you had a way to scale the number of lands you have, then each intruder alarm trigger untapping a Magus of the Candelabra would untap X lands, each of which untaps selvala, which is worth an extra layer. wheras previously untapping a magus didn't actually do much because it would only untap a small number of lands. Similarly, if you had a way to re-use Rowan you could scale the number of embelems which would be worth a few more layers in this section.
@Deelit: Consuming Bonfire can only target non-elemental creatures or treefolk creatures. It can't kill Nyxbloom Ancient. Auratog could though, so we would have to replace Nyxbloom Ancient with Mana Reflection which essentially does the same. I'll do that, thanks. Hadn't thought about that!
@jfb:
Wow, that infinite is a big issue. I'll probably have to change the commander, which makes Thousand-Year Storm significantly weaker and probably a place to cut. As it is, Consuming Bonfire allows us to get the storm count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power with the last Selvala untap before we play another spell or activate our Scepter the next time. Which is absolitely ridiculously powerful. But Djinn Illuminatus could accomplish basically the same, so that's an alternative.
Then we just need to add a creature sac outlet, which should be safe to add if Horde of Notions is removed. Removing Horde of Notions means we can keep Nyxbloom of course.
We already get copies of Wirewood Lodge from Molten Echoes and Doubling Season and we can also reuse Rowan with Eerie Ultimatum (which gets copied by TYS), Make a Wish (which returns Ultimatum and gets copied by TYS) and by the self exiling spells like Time Spiral (which return Make a Wish and also get copied by TYS).
But I don't think you understand the Selvala chain.
Every time we tap Unbender Tine, we get a LOT of untaps of Isochron Scepter (because of lots of Kurkesh, remember we're using Molten Echoes, Bloodbond March and Doubling Season). Every untap casts a LOT of Spiritual Visits (again, Kurkesh). Every Spiritual Visit is copied X times by all of our Thousand Year Storms, the token gets doubled by Doubling Seasons, which triggers all Intruder Alarm copies, which trigger multiple times because of Yarok. That untaps all our Magus of the Candelabras, which untap all Wirewood Lodges (Nature's Revolt makes them copyable creatures), this ability gets copied by Rowan and all our Wirewood Lodges untap Selvala, which also gets copied by Rowan. One Selvala untap generates X mana, multiplied by all our Nyxbloom Ancients, which we use to grow Heroe's Bane countless times (this ability also gets copied by Rowan and all the counters get copied by Doubling Season). So the next time Selvala gets untapped from Lodge, it will generate a LOT more mana since Heroe's Bane itself grows exponentially.
This is MUCH more than 3 layers.
If I'm not mistaken, every single untap of Unbender Tine should actually add X layers, so we will get a LOT of layers. So many layers that we would need arrow notations to count them.
Because every copy of an Isochron activation will essentially translate Heroe's Bane's power into a much larger number of creatures entering the battlefield, every one of which triggers multiple layers of Selvala untaps and every Selvala untap exponentially grows Heroe's Bane. And since we can recast a spell for just 5 mana, we can essentially push our TYS spell count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power, so the next copy of the Scepter avility will be incredibly more powerful.
Of course that last interaction would be gone without Horde of Notion, but Djinn Illuminatus works just as well.
Oh and I think it's safe to replace Make a Wish with Echo of Eons, which is strictly better AND has flashback once we're out of other self exiling recursion spells.
I'm not sure how you figure each Unbender Tine adds X layers. Let's examine that part of the combo.
Each Heroes' Bane ability multiplies Heroes' Bane's power by (2^D + 1), where D is the number of Doubling Seasons. So it takes X power to (2^D + 1)^X. Each activation of Heroes' Bane gets copied K times if we have K emblems created by Rowan Kenrith, so it will take an exponential tower of length N to length N + K. While this is better than exponentation, it is not as good as tetration (X -> 2^^X), and the advantage over exponentation will disappear as we go up in layers. So this is roughly exponentiation, or Layer 1.
Each time we activate Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, we add X*3^N mana, so that we can activate Heroes' Bane (X*3^N)/4 times, getting (X*3^N)/4 abilities, so that we add (K*X*3^N)/4 exponents to whatever exponential chain we have. Again, this is slightly better than tetration, but worse than pentation, so this is Layer 2.
Each Wirewood Lodge activation gets copied K times by Rowan Kenrith, so we get K+1 untappings of Selvala from the activation. Each Magus of the Candelabra activation gets copied K times by Rowan Kenrith, and each ability untaps all W Wirewood Lodges, so we untap Wirewood Lodge W(K+1) times, leading to W(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. Each Selvala gets us a tetration, so this is roughly 2^^^W(K+1)^2. Again, while repeating tetration a constant number of times is better than tetration, it is still not as good as pentation, which is X -> 2^^^X. So this is still Layer 2.
Each time a copy of Spiritual Visit resolves, we get 2^D new tokens, each of which acivates all I Intruder Alarms, each of which gets copied Y times by Yarok, the Desecrated. Each of those abilities untaps all M copies of Magus of the Candalabra. So each copy of Spiritual Visit results in 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. This is still a constant number of Selvala activations, so we are still at Layer 2.
Each time we cast a Spiritual Visit via Isochron Scepter, it gets triggered all Tys copies of Thousand-Year Storm, each of which generates a number of copies equal to our storm count. The number of TYSes is fixed, but our storm count keeps increasing, thanks to repeatedly casting Consuming Bonfire from the graveyard. We get (Tys*Sc+1) copies of Spiritual Visit, for (Tys*Sc+1)* 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. Since Sc increases proportionally with our amount of mana, this is pentation (X -> 2^^^X), or Layer 3.
Each time we activate Unbender Tine, it gets copied Ku times by Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient. Each copy untaps Isochron Scepter, which also gets copied Ku times. So this is (Ku+1)^2 castings of Spiritual Visit, or (Ku+1)^2 pentations. This is slower growing than hexation, so we are still at Layer 3.
So, assuming that the other variables are fixed throughout the resolution of an activation of an Unbending Tine (besides Heroes' Bane's power and the storm count), we get a fixed number of pentations for each activation of Unbending Tine.
I know this is probably disappointing; it takes a little while to get a feel for how up arrows work, and how to best handle the recursion.
I will take a look at the rest of the combo in a bit.
Edit: Corrected the above after noticing you were casting Consuming Bonfire to increase the storm count.
You might be misunderstanding what I mean by layers. A layer is a system which takes in one (or a small amount) of a resource (mana, life, triggers that untap a certain thing), and outputs X of another resource, where X increases over time. X of this other resource repeats everything you've done so far X times.
As a simple example, lets say your base combo is that spending a red mana doubles the value of X, spending a green mana generates X red mana, and spending a white mana generates X green mana. As X actually increases as the combo progresses, it's really referring to a different value each time. Say it starts off as 3, and you have 2 white mana. The combo looks like:
Spend a white mana, get 3 green mana
- Spend a green mana, get 3 red mana
- Spend a red mana, set X to 6
- Spend a red mana, set X to 12
- Spend a red mana, set X to 24
- Spend a green mana, get 24 red mana
- Repeat this 24 times: Spend a red mana, set X to 2X. Overall, X becomes about 2^24
- Spend a green mana, get 2^24 red mana
- Repeat: Spend a red mana, set X to 2X - overall, X becomes 2^2^24
[By this point, the action of spending a green mana can be shortcut to setting X to 2^X]
- Spend a white mana, get 2^2^24 green mana
- Repeat that many times: Spend a green mana to set X to 2^X. Overall, X becomes 2^^X
And so on, each layer adding an up arrow.
Your sequence, if it worked as intended, would be somewhere between 8 an 10 layers.
There are ways to get X layers, but they are much more intricate.
However, this issue with your sequence is that parts of it don't scale - which is why I only counted 3 layers. (there might be a few more). Unless I'm missing something, once a creature or enchantment is on the battlefield, you aren't making more copies of it until much later in the sequence. Same with rowan embelems - although you are reusing rowan later in the sequence, you aren't making more embelems every time you run though this part of the combo.
Imagine if in my example layer system the step was instead "spend a green mana to make 1000 red mana". Then, you can see that once X reaches 1000 (which it does quickly), I'm worse off than in my original combo. Now if you imagine the step was "spend a green mana to make an amount of red mana equal to the number of creatures you control", and a later step was "spend a blue mana to make X creatures", where blue mana was only used in a much later sequence, then I'm really in the same sequence - say before I use any blue mana, I can make 1000 creatures, then I'm in the same situation; then later in the sequence I spend a blue mana to make (say) 2^^^^1000 creatures; which appears to make the lower sequence slightly better, but still not as good as a proper layer would have been for the same reason The final count is going to get much bigger than 2^^^1000 so that factor didn't really do much.
This is basically what you're doing with embelems and other stuff.
Edit: Deedlit's post is exploins what exactly is going on here - you're repeating things a number of times described by expressions like 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2, but none of those numbers are actually proportional to X, which if they wore it would be worth more layers. In the next step, the expression involved the storm count, which IS proportional to X, so it is worth a layer.
There seems to be an infinite combo with Magister of Worth. We can put Magister of Worth into play, triggering its ETB ability. Then we can kill the Magister with Consuming Bonfire or whatever creature destroying card we are replacing it with. Magister's ETB ability will then return it to the battlefield, and we can repeat the process.
Edit: Looking at the rest of the combo, it looks like we get (assuming that the infinites are fixed):
Layer 4: Heroes' Bane dealing damage in combat with lifelink will gain us a lot of life, which can be used to return Wydwen, the Biting Gale many times (not sure how this continues the combo without Magister of Worth, but let's suppose that that is fixed).
There are other "potential" layers in that part of the combo, but they are all based on the number of a particular permanent/emblem, so they don't scale properly. There are also many potential layers after Waves of Aggression, but they don't work, because we can't hold on to the stack when we enter and leave combat.
A possible solution is to get rid of the combat part of the combo. If we replace Second Sunrise with, say, Heliod's Intervention, that skips some combo pieces, but at least it allows us to gain layers later on. Then we get:
Layer 4: Casting Heliod's Intervention gains us a lot of life, to be spent on Wydwen.
Layer 5: Casting Surreal Memoir can retrieve Heliod's Intervention many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 7: Activating Nissa, Vital Force allows us to retrieve Chandra Ablaze many times, thanks to Repeated Reverberation. (As previously mentioned, Nissa's ability is targeted. But, after all the Repeated Reverberation triggers go on the stack, they are resolved one at a time. Each time, this puts a copy of Nissa's loyalty ability on the stack, which at that point targets Chadra Ablaze in the graveyard. Chandra is retrieved, and we can destroy it again before the next RR trigger is resolved. So this will still get a layer.)
I'm not sure how we are destroying planeswalkers in this deck, but presumably it is not so difficult to do.
Layer 8: Casting Eerie Ultimatum will get many copies and bring back Nissa, Vital Force many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 9: Casting Make a Wish will get many copies and retrieve Eerie Ultimatum many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 10: Activating Holistic Wisdom and exiling a sorcery card will allow us to retrieve Make a Wish many times, thanks to Rowan Kenrith emblems. This time the emblems do scale, since we can use Nissa to retrieve Rowan Kenrith and activate her many times.
So, this will get us about 2 -> N+2 -> 11, where N is the number of sorcery cards we can exile to activate Holistic Wisdom.
Edit: Oh, I guess with whatever Ancalagon is using to destroy their planeswalkers, they can destroy Nissa with RR triggers from its ability on the stack, and then they can return Nissa from the graveyard to their hand, and replay it. So that goes infinite.
Taking out Nissa will drop the final damage to 2 -> N+2 -> 10.
Getting back to this after standard,
First off, welcome Ancalagon91, always nice to see a new name here.
As to your deck, I think the other posts have already explained whats going on there, and their estimations are probably better than mine.
I'm still a bit rusty with the deck, bit I think mana layers (like Gaea's Cradle) run into problems with Worldpurge. I think we wantmana abilities that use the stack like Deathrite shaman and Witch engine
Of course, I didn't realise that the number of Doubling Seasons, Kurkesh, etc was still constant with every Scepter activation, even if it was a very large number... They don't scale, so that's not an additional layer. My bad! Thanks for pointing that out.
But what if every Scepter activation would increase the number of Doubling Seasons, Molten Echoes, etc? If Repudiate//Replicate was imprinted and we had Djinn Illuminatus, we could copy replicate Replicate up to (x-1)/3 times where X is Heroe's Bane's power to alternately copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes and Yarok, the Desecrated.
(Ignore for the moment that this would create all sorts of infinite combos in the current deck, the decklist would have to change significantly)
And the original spell cast from the Scepter could target a Precursor Golem and use Xenograft to turn everything into Golems so that everything else (Kurkesh, Nyxbloom Ancient, etc) also gets copied.
In that case, every untap of Unbender Tine should add a bunch of layers, right?
But yes, being able to create X copies of different creatures at a low level would certainly help with turning some of those "potential layers" into actual layers. (not the ones depending on Rowan Kenrith emblems, of course) However, each new combo would be a new layer for that combo, it wouldn't be a case of each untapping of Unbender Tine adding a bunch of layers, or even a single layer. The way it works is, if you have a certain procedure A that achieves N layers, then if you create a new procedure B that repeats procedure A X number of times, and refreshes the number that A depends on each time it is repeated, then procedure B would be layer N+1. It is also possible to create a procedure that turns X of a resource into X layers, but those have to be created in a very specific manner; you don't just get them by adding more recursion to the combo. We haven't seen a situation where activating an ability adds some number of layers each time you do it.
@Anacalagon - Yes, if you had some way to scale the numbers of everything at the base level, such as Replicate, you would get more layers. You won't though get to any point where untapping Unbender Tine is worth X layers, without a more advanced technicque we call a stage combo; rather some number bigger than 3.
@Deedlit:
Going over every layer in 3090:
Angelheart Vial,Rings of Brighthearth,Howling Gale,Boon Reflection
Probably intended: 1 damage = X vials trigger; 1 vial = X copies of the life gain ability; 1 copy of the ability = X life - 3 layers
Reality: Boon reflection breaks the hyperstage, so can't be used. Vials also get reset in between worldpurges. 1 damage = X vials trigger, which all must be used before the worldpurge, so just gain X life - 1 layer.
If vials can be protected by soul scuplptor (or a pretty convoluted phasing setup) then it's 2 layers.
A concern is that vials might be able given to the opponent via mirrorweave - is that an issue?
Finally, the layer trigger, Howling Gale, doesn't work since we don't have access yet to green mana. Ashcloud Phoenix could be an option? It would be able to leave behind a morph during a computation, but that should be OK since morphs have no creature types so it would quickly die.
Mournful Zombie
1 white = X copies of ability = X opponent life - 1 layer (without the boon reflection)
This works, although it needs to be given haste so the Marchessa's Smuggler and Eye of Ramos need to be used here.
Plains, Caged Sun, Amulet of Vigor
Intended: 1 plains ETB = X amulet triggers; 1 amulet trigger = X white mana - 2 layers.
Reality: The plains gets bounced by the worldpurge, making the amulet triggers do nothing. 1 plains ETB = X white - 1 layer.
Gaea's Cradle: Same issue as the plains. 1 layer rather than 2.
Helldozer - I'm not sure how this actually reuses the cradle
Lotus Petal, Morturary
1 card draw = play lotus petal with March out, remove March before DN triggers; X mana - 1 layer - works
Dragon Appeasement, Pitchstone Wall, Curse of Chaos
Intended: 1 combat step = X discards; 1 discard = X sacrifices; 1 sacrifice = X draws
Reality: Things that trigger on discard don't work for 2 reasons. Firstly, in this deck we're using Gerrard's Verdict. The deck in 3090 wasn't, but it still wouldn't have worked for the second reason: The cleanup step is an infinite discard outlet, since discarding to handsize, if it triggers an ability, gives players priority after which there's another cleanup phase. Only works if somehow the setup were to require casting a spell that gave no max handsize for the rest of the game.
@Deelit11: Oh wow, looks like the rule about the CMC of split cards was changed. I didn't play MtG for about 4 or 5 years and only started again recently so I missed that rule change. That's unfortunate :-(
@Ancalgon: Yeah, they also changed double faced cards to have the same cmc on both sides, instead of all of them being 0.
@deedlit: Worldpurge also clears mana pools, so the plains/gaea's cradle with Amulet of Vigor and caged sun generate a whole bunch of mana, but we need to convert it all before Worldpurging, so we don't get full effect of everything above increasing our conversion.
@jfb: If we use the cleanup step as an infinite discard outlet, we can't attack for the win, so that's not a problem, though Gerrard's Verdict would still be a discard outlet.
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Back to thinking about the challenge.
Because I'm a bit rusty with the stage mechanics, I'm going to focus on the standard challenge for now, especially as we now have full m21 spoilers.
The only cards that stood out to me from that are:
Teferi, Master of Time the first PW we can activate at instant speed, shame the looting is probably too powerful. Maybe we can set it up so that the +1 leaves us stuck with a useless used PW, so we need to use the -3 to kill itself?
Feline Sovereign just the protection from Hungry Lynx without the rest. Though, the protection was the least useful part of that card.
Idol of endurance a way to turn white mana into replaying cheap creatures, not sure if this has a slot but seems both narrow and powerful.
Anyway, gonna be looking back at the standard thread.
Previously, when more than 2 cards were exiled to it, casting one of them allows us to copy all of rest of them. Now, I believe it will only copy one of them of our choice.
Edit: Added in Fiery Emancipation for more tripling.
1 Show and Tell
1 Omniscience
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Vedalken Orrery
1 Opalescence
4 Dual Nature
4 Doubling Season
4 Copy Enchantment
1 Equilibrium
1 Nyxbloom Ancient
2 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dance of Many
1 Fiery Emancipation
1 Precursor Golem
2 Mirrorweave
1 Growth Spiral
1 Hungering Hydra
1 Stern Proctor
1 Coat of Arms
1 Xenograft
1 Join Shields
1 Mark of Mutiny
4 Inner Struggle
4 Justice Strike
4 Wrack with Madness
2 Kiku's Shadow
4 Rite of Replication
4 Cackling Counterpart
4 Praetor's Counsel
So here is the general plan:
Stage 0 - The setup
1. Black Lotus
2. Show and Tell
3. Omniscience
4. Enter the Infinite (Gaea's Cradle on top)
5. Vedalken Orrery
6. Equilibrium
7. Opalescence
8. Gaea's Cradle
9. Xenograft (Choosing Golem)
10. Coat of Arms
Stage 1 - The Season
1. Dual Nature
2. Doubling Season
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all 4 copies of each.
4. Dance of Many, (n-1 batches of DS, 1 of DN)
5. Copy Enchantment targeting Dance, same batches as above. If I'm correct, this should be better than simply making batches of DS and DN directly because the copy enchantment tokens coming into play as Dance are multiplied, and the the tokens those tokens make are multiplied again.
6. Repeat step 5 twice more, holding back one Copy Enchantment.
7. Nyxbloom Ancient
8. Tap Gaea's Cradle for lots of G.
9. Copy Enchantment, pay 1 to use Equilibrium to bounce another CE. Target Dance, same as above.
10. Repeat step 9 until one mana is left.
11. Copy Enchantment, pay 1 to use Equilibrium to bounce another CE. Target Dance. This time, make the last batch target a Nyxbloom.
12. Growth Spiral, put into play the second Gaea's Cradle and keep the untapped one.
13. Tap for more G.
14. Repeat steps 9 and 10, except use the last mana to bounce a CE and keep it in hand.
15. Play Fiery Emancipation
16. Copy Enchantment, targeting Dance. This time, make the last batch target the Emancipation.
Stage 2 - The Precursor
1. Stern Proctor. Have all of them target Opalescence.
2. Precursor Golem
3. Mirrorweave targeting Precursor.
4. After the first copy resolves, Rite of Replication targeting a Precursor.
5. Rite will copy n times for each of my creatures, where n is the number of creatures I have.
6. After the last Rite resolves, let the next Mirrorweave copy resolve, turning my new generic Golems into Precursors.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all 8 copies of Rite and Cackling Counterpart.
Stage 3 - The Hunger
1. Hungering Hydra (can be played with X=0 using Omniscience because of Xenograft for Golem and Coat of Arms)
2. Join Shields
3. Cast Mark of Mutiny and all 14 copies of Justice Strike, Inner Struggle, Wrack with Madness, and Kiku's Shadow on a golem.
4. Before any of the spells resolve, Praetor's Counsel.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other 3 copies of Counsel.
6. Still refusing to allow any spells actually resolve, Mirrorweave again targeting Hungering Hydra.
7. Stack the copies so that the first copy to resolve is targeting one of the Hungering Hydra tokens.
8. All creatures become Hungering Hydra, and the remaining copies of Mirrorweave are redundant.
9. All of the self-harm spells resolve, generating massive +1/+1 counters for all Hydras.
10. Mark of Mutiny resolves, giving more counters and Haste to all Hydras.
11. Move to combat and swing.
Thanks for humoring me, and let me know what you think! I'm sure I haven't broken any records, but maybe there's something in there that a person smarter than I can use for the better.
Not going to do a full analysis but can provide some pointers:
First, Dance of Many goes infinite with the other enchantments as the Dual nature copies can target the original Dance to make more tokens, so it needs to be cut/replaced.
Part 1
For step 5 its best to alternate between making more DS and more DN.
part 2
After mirrorweaving, put the opalescence back in play so the copy effects also make DN and DS. (I think there's even a more optimal way to do this, but don't want to work it out now)
part 3
All of the spells are still on the stack when you cast Praetor's Counsel so you dont get them back until the originals resolve.
Importantly, Praetor's counsel gets back the Gaea's Cradle so you can make more mana and enchantments.
Estimation (these are suuper rough and im rusty/fuzzily remembering the shortcuts of how DS+DN worked in similar decks):
DN+DS-> x^^x
copy enchantments x^^^^x (alternating DS and DN x^^^x otherwise)
green mana x->x->6
Equilibrium x->x->8
golems x->x->10
replicate x->x->13 (assuming with copies of DS and DN getting made, x->x->11 with your line)
justice x->x->14
counsel x->5->15 (assuming with remaking green mana, otherwise x->60->14)
This estimation is probably high, because things don't actually chain into each other as nicely as I'm making it.
In general its most deck efficient to only have multiple copies of the most powerful cards (latest in the combo). those extra justic strikes would be better as more self exiling twister variants.
some easy improvements would be a single Timetwister for the PC to get back, Thousand-year storm (your storm count is kinda low but you can make a bunch of copies of it TYS is just strictly better than Swarm Intelligence)
You have a bunch of resources that you are not using: any of the other colors, or life totals.
Something like Ionize to let a counsel recur itself (after adding TYS) for the cost of 2 of your 20 life.
Then a finite way to gain life and so on.
Here's the current deck last time we left off:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
9 Desolation Giant
10 March of the Machines
11 Goblin Boom Keg
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Satyr's Cunning
22 Mana Echoes
23 Stern Proctor
24 Simian Spirit Guide
25 Spellweaver Helix
26 Seismic Spike
27 Worldpurge
28 Gerrard's Verdict
29 Flash of Defiance
30 Flash of Defiance
31 Flash of Defiance
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Drownyard Temple
34 Wormfang Behemoth
36 Show and Tell
37 Omniscience
38 Words of Wisdom
39 Chameleon Blur
40 Leyline of Punishment
Things that are off limits include:
- Dealing damage to any creature, other than via Goblin Boom Keg
- Killing any creature or artifact we control without killing them all
- Giving any creature haste, unless it can't attack or can't be blocked
- Controlling a necromancer during a computation
- O-ring effects that can be creatures (else they can allow a necromancer to exist during a computation)
- Doing anything at instant speed that could interfere with a computation
- Returning instants from the graveyard to our hand
Resources used:
- Colourless mana
- Red mana
- Life
We'd like to now build as many layers as possible on top of the life hyperstage.
Doing so will be tricky, because firstly any resources that are permanents will be bounced by the worldpurge, and secondly because the cowardice can bounce any creature we may want to use. #3090 contains some good ideas though not all of them work.
Anyway, here's the list, commander is Horde of Notions:
1 Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Mana Crypt
1 Wine of Blood and Iron
1 Heroes' Bane
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Nature's Revolt
1 Magus of the Candelabra
1 Wirewood Lodge
1 Commando Raid
1 Mage Slayer
1 True Conviction
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Quest for Pure Flame
1 Necropolis Regent
1 Experimental Overload
1 Tidal Barracuda
1 Surreal Memoir
1 Nyxbloom Ancient
1 Kindred Charge
1 Janjeet Sentry
1 Opalescence
1 Era of Innovation
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
1 Rhox Faithmender
1 Peema Aether-Seer
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Soulblast
1 Assault Suit
1 Abyssal Persecutor
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Oath of Teferi
1 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
1 Noble Purpose
1 Waves of Aggression
1 Wydwen, the Biting Gale
1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
1 Cloudshredder Sliver
1 Aetherwind Basker
1 World Shaper
1 No Rest for the Wicked
1 Second Sunrise
1 Chandra Ablaze
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Celestial Mantle
1 Pathbreaker Ibex
1 Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
1 Requiem Angel
1 Mirror Gallery
1 Intruder Alarm
1 Teysa Karlov
1 Yarok, the Desecrated
1 Magister of Worth
1 Ballot Broker
1 Soulsworn Jury
1 Bloodbond March
1 Hivestone
1 Molten Echoes
1 Doubling Season
1 Overblaze
1 Spiritual Visit
1 Lapis Lazuli Talisman
1 Omniscience
1 Show and Tell
1 Lotus Petal
1 Repeated Reverberation
1 Unbender Tine
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Thran Foundry
1 Cranial Archive
1 Feldon's Cane
1 Emergency Powers
1 Recall
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Time Reversal
1 Game Plan
1 Finale of Revelation
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Time Spiral
1 Make a Wish
1 Creeping Renaissance
1 Mythos of Brokkos
1 Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
1 Eerie Ultimatum
1 Angel's Grace
1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Consuming Bonfire
1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Holistic Wisdom
1 Deathless Angel
1 Auratog
And here's what it does:
Stage 0: Draw
Play Mana Crypt, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Angel's Grace, Ad Nauseam. Draw your deck.
Stage 1: Setup:
Play Hivestone, Opalescence, Soulsworn Jury, Mirror Gallery, Molten Echoes (naming Sliver), Doubling Season, Bloodbond March, Noble Purpose, Intruder Alarm, Nature's Revolt, True Conviction
Then we play Copy Enchantment, the copies we get from Doubling Season and Molten Echoes will copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes, while the original card stays a Copy Enchanment. We need that later to copy auras.
Next we start to play our creatures:
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Cloudshredder Sliver. Selvala has haste, but we need green mana. Play Dryad Arbor. Activate Selvala with every Intruder Alarm trigger from here on and gain enough mana to get us through the next steps.
Soulsworn Jury can be used on our most important creatures to gain many more copies of them through Bloodbond March. Don't worry, we'll be able to retrieve him later and gain enough copies to later use him on any creature spell we play.
Play Yarok, the Desecrated, Horde of Notions, Teysa Karlov, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Tireless Tracker and World Shaper. Discard Wirewood Lodge to Chainer, kill World Shaper with Consuming Bonfire, returning the animated Lodge, get multiple copies. Since there are multiple World Shaper death triggers, we should kill the original Dryad Arbors and Wirewood Lodges with Consuming Bonfire in response, to be able to return them (Horde of Notions allows us to do that from the grave for 1 mana of every colour. We also get a bunch of Clue tokens (Doubling Season doubles those, too), which we will need later.
Cast Magus of the Candelabra and Heroe's Bane. From now on, every time a creature enters the battlefield, we will get multiple untaps from every copy of Intruder Alarm. We use every Magus to untap all our Wirewood Lodges, which untap Selvala. Selvala will grow our Heroe's Bane, to give us more mana next time.
Ok, now that we've got this, we can play Thousand-Year Storm. The trick with Thousand-Year Storm and Horde of Notions is that we can use the mana from our last Selvala untap to cast Consuming Bonfire on Heroe's Bane, so our storm count will be in about the same order of magnitude as the power of Heroe's Bane! Yes, that's a lot of spell copies. Deathless Angel makes Heroe's Bane indestructible, so it doesn't get killed when we cast and recast Consuming Bonfire.
We play the rest of our setup creatures: Ballot Broker, Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, Rhox Faithmender, Zada, Hedron Grinder, Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, Abyssal Persecutor, Wydwen, the Biting Gale, Pathbreaker Ibex, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, Requiem Angel, Nyxbloom Ancient
We can now kill any of our non-spirit creatures which we don't need (like the copies of Wydwen for example) to get multiple Spirit tokens, untapping Magus of the Candelabra again and again.
Ok, so we double or triple pretty much everything and neither player can win or lose the game. Now it's time to play Isochron Scepter, imprinting Spiritual Visit. We activate it and copy it as often as we can with Kurkesh. The copy is cast, so we can use Splice onto Arcane with Overblaze. It now has a target and the target of the original spell is Zada, so it gets copied once for every creature we have. The copies from Thousand Year Storm all target our Heroe's Bane. Every Isochron activation will also increase our storm count since the original copy is cast.
We get lots and lots of untaps on Selvala, Heroe's Bane will grow larger and larger. Then we play Oath of Teferi and Rowan Kenrith. We cast Repeted Reverberation, which means our next loyalty ability will get copied twice as much as our Thousand-Year storm count. We ultimate Rowan Kenrith. Twice. This now copies every activated ability, including Scepter activations!
Speaking of which, we will now play Unbender Tine and untap Scepter with it, which gets copied by Rowan's ultimate ability, then we activate Scepter which gets copied again by Rowan. Also Magus of the Candelabra, Wirewood Lodge and Heroe's Bane will get copied by Rowan's ultimate.
With Lapis Lazuli Talisman out, we can now untap Unbender Tine once every time we cast a blue spell. We will cast lots of blue spells - that's what Blue Sun's Zenith is for. Every time we sac a clue, we will draw a LOT of cards, so we can recast Zenith just as often.
The other way to untap Unbender Tine is with Janjeet Sentry, for which we need energy. This will of course get copied by Rowan. We can get energy from Architect of the Untamed, Aetherwind Basker, Era of Innovation and Peema Aether-Seer.
Setup almost done. Pollenbright Wings and Celestial Mantle enchant our Heroe's Bane.
Now we play Kindred Charge, naming Sliver, cast and ultimate Teferi so that we can activate Planeswalkers at instant speed and our board is set up! The copies of the plain Copy Enchantment can copy Auras and we use that to get a few Celestial Mantles, later also Pollenbright Wings.
Stage 2: Combo
Kill the original one of every creature (not animated enchantment!) we have except for Heroe's Bane and play Magister of Worth. This will trigger a lot of times and every trigger will return all our creatures to play. In response to every trigger, we kill the original creature again.
We get a lot of World Shapers, which will return our lands, the lands will get copied by Molten Echoes and Doubling Season, this will give us a lot of Clue tokens (and also energy), which we can use to draw and cast Blue Sun's Zenith, which triggers Talisman, which untaps Unbender Tine, etc.
Unfortunately this is over quickly, so on to the next stage!
Stage 3: Attacking
We play Mage Slayer and equip Heroe's Bane, also cast Commando Raid on it and play Quest for Pure Flame. Attack with everything we have.
First things first - Mageslayer trigger. Heroe's Bane will deal a lot more damage than it has power thanks to Overblaze and lifelink from True Conviction combined with Rhox Faithmenderwill gain us a lot of life. Dealing damage will also enable us to crack Quest for Pure Flame.
We use that life to return Wydwen to our hand, discard Wydwen to Chainer to get a lot of creature replays from our grave (Chainer's ability gets copied by Rowan) and replay Magister of Worth, Magister also returns Wyden, so for the cost of 1 life we get to to repeat stage 2 over and over again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow Pathbreaker Ibex with Wine of Blood and Iron. The value of X on Pathbreaker Ibex is determined when the trigger resolves, so all our creatures are now stronger than Heroe's Bane was before. Next we let a Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin trigger resolve, so we will get just as many tokens, doubled by doubling seasons, then remember to kill them with Bonfire and transform every Goblin into a lot of Spirits. And for every untap we get from Intruder Alarm, Heroe's Bane grows. Then we let an Aetherwind Basker trigger resolve, which gives us energy to untap Unbender Tine again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow the next Pathbreaker Ibex and repeat: Pathbreaker Ibex -> Krenkro -> Aetherwind Basker until all triggers are resolved. Now we dump all mana into Heroe's Bane.
Stage 4: Combat Damage
Lifelink gives us a lot of life again to start our Wydwen-Chainer-combo.
ThenVarchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor gives our opponent a bunch of tokens, which also untap our creatures.
Next we get a lot of life from Noble Purpose triggers, but don't spend that yet - wait for Celestial Mantle and its copies to double it (which gets multiplied by Rhox Faithmender!). After all those triggers, start the Wydwen combo again.
Then, Pollenbright Wings gives us a bunch of tokens, you know what to do already.
Then we get a lot of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician untaps on our Unbender Tine.
That was the first strike damage. Now our opponent has tokens, so in addition to what we've done before, we get a lot of Commando Raid triggers. Let them resolve after the Wydwen combo, so Heroe's Bane is more powerful and deals more damage, so we gain more life from lifelink, to get more creature replays from Wydwen and Chainer. Make a token indestructible to keep it around.
We might later have to kill our own Planeswalkers and I haven't found a really good way to do this, so I've included Sword of Sinew and Steel.
Stage 5: Again!
5.1 Waves of Aggression for many, many more combat steps.
5.2 Once the last combat step is over, we play No Rest for the Wicked. It's not targeted, so it will get copied by Rowan if we sac it. Let the first copy of the ability resolve, return all creatures including Dryad Arbor to hand, which we can use to cast Waves of Aggression from the grave via retrace. Repeat the Stages 2 - 5.1 for every copy of the ability, then crack every one of the copies of No Rest for the Wicked to do the same again.
5.3 Cast Crystal Chimes and crack it. Unfortunately we don't get any copies since Chimes is and artifact and copying artifacts is off-limits for us, but the ability will get copied by Rowan's ultimate and by Kurkesh.
5.4 Cast Second Sunrise, which gets copied a bunch of times. Remember to kill the original one of every creature and animated enchantment we have so they all get returned and copied again. Every copy of Second Sunrise also returns Crystal Chimes so we can repeat everything including 5.3
5.5 Discard Surreal Memoir to Chainer. Casting this to return Second Sunrise is the next step, but we can't cast it from our hand or it would be exiled. It's not targeted, so every copy can return a Second Sunrise.
5.6 Cast Chandra Ablaze and ultimate her. This casts Surreal Memoir and repeats everything up to stage 5.5. It gets copied by Rowan's ability, too! Chandra also recasts Commando Raid and Kindred Charge. A lot of times.
5.7 Cast Nissa and return Chandra and Rowan. Her ability is targeted, so we can only return Chandra and Rowan twice (because of Oath of Teferi), but I think it's still worth it to include her. This also finally returns Rowan, so we can ultimate him a lot more often, which will really jump-start our combo.
5.8 Cast Eerie Ultimatum or Primevals' Glorious Rebirth and do it all again for all the storm count we have.
5.9 Cast Make a Wish. This isn't targeted either, so every copy of it can return Nissa and Rowan or Nissa and Chandra.
6. And again
Now we still have cards like Time Spiral or Feldon's Cane left, which will repeat every step prior to this. I've included every card I could find which does this and also gets copied by Thousand-Year Storm or Rowan (and doesn't go infinite like Metallurgic Summonings. Enchantments are off limits for this unfortunately)
7. Once more
Now we can use Holistic Wisdom to turn every sorcery we have left over and don't need into Make a Wish and later Make a Wish itself into one last copy of Eerie Ultimatum.
8. The kill
After the last combat step is over and we have nothing else left to do and our mana pool is just 3WUBRG, we equip one Abyssal Persecutor with Assault Suit, sac Opalescence to Auratog so we can keep our Thousand-Year Storm, cast Consuming Bonfire on our Abyssal Persecutor with the Assault suit, then cast Soulblast in response. After every copy of Soulblast is resolved, Abyssal Persecutor is killed and our opponent dies.
I hope there's not still an infinity combo hidden somwhere, because I've already removed a lot of potential infinites.
The deck also still has one open card slot and I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but the damage should be very high (if it works without going infinite?). So high anyway that I can't calculate it even with the arrow notation. It should be higher than any other megacombo I've seen so far unless I'm mistaken?
/Edit:
Just removed Patron Wizard because that's an infinite combo with Time Spiral or any other self exiling recursion spell. Replaced with Soulsworn Jury which is just as good once we get Magister of Worth going.
Also it would probably be good to replace Heroe's Bane with Hungering Hydra, Evolution Vat and Guilty Conscience
Rith, the Awakener is likely a better replacement for Pollenbright Wings, because it turns out they are kind of useless actually.
Taking an initial look, you can use Horde of Notions to repeatedly cast Nyxbloom Ancient, and kill it with Consuming Bonfire, getting unlimited amounts of mana due to Intruder Alarm.
You have a lot of cards/steps that basically do the same thing - e.g. casting blue spells and paying energy both individually untap the unbender time, but the impact of this is going to be dominated by whichever of those things you can do more of, making the other not really matter. It's more efficient to chain your resources together in "layers" - for example, using X to represent the amount of each resource accumulated before it, each time you cast your token maker, you get X copies of it (thanks to TYS), each of which gets you X intruder alarm triggers, each of which generates X mana with Selvala - which is 3 layers.
The other thing you want to do is scale your resources (i.e changing the value of X), so that each layer truely makes the next iteration of it better - for example, if you had a way to scale the number of lands you have, then each intruder alarm trigger untapping a Magus of the Candelabra would untap X lands, each of which untaps selvala, which is worth an extra layer. wheras previously untapping a magus didn't actually do much because it would only untap a small number of lands. Similarly, if you had a way to re-use Rowan you could scale the number of embelems which would be worth a few more layers in this section.
@Deelit: Consuming Bonfire can only target non-elemental creatures or treefolk creatures. It can't kill Nyxbloom Ancient. Auratog could though, so we would have to replace Nyxbloom Ancient with Mana Reflection which essentially does the same. I'll do that, thanks. Hadn't thought about that!
@jfb:
Wow, that infinite is a big issue. I'll probably have to change the commander, which makes Thousand-Year Storm significantly weaker and probably a place to cut. As it is, Consuming Bonfire allows us to get the storm count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power with the last Selvala untap before we play another spell or activate our Scepter the next time. Which is absolitely ridiculously powerful. But Djinn Illuminatus could accomplish basically the same, so that's an alternative.
Then we just need to add a creature sac outlet, which should be safe to add if Horde of Notions is removed. Removing Horde of Notions means we can keep Nyxbloom of course.
We already get copies of Wirewood Lodge from Molten Echoes and Doubling Season and we can also reuse Rowan with Eerie Ultimatum (which gets copied by TYS), Make a Wish (which returns Ultimatum and gets copied by TYS) and by the self exiling spells like Time Spiral (which return Make a Wish and also get copied by TYS).
But I don't think you understand the Selvala chain.
Every time we tap Unbender Tine, we get a LOT of untaps of Isochron Scepter (because of lots of Kurkesh, remember we're using Molten Echoes, Bloodbond March and Doubling Season). Every untap casts a LOT of Spiritual Visits (again, Kurkesh). Every Spiritual Visit is copied X times by all of our Thousand Year Storms, the token gets doubled by Doubling Seasons, which triggers all Intruder Alarm copies, which trigger multiple times because of Yarok. That untaps all our Magus of the Candelabras, which untap all Wirewood Lodges (Nature's Revolt makes them copyable creatures), this ability gets copied by Rowan and all our Wirewood Lodges untap Selvala, which also gets copied by Rowan. One Selvala untap generates X mana, multiplied by all our Nyxbloom Ancients, which we use to grow Heroe's Bane countless times (this ability also gets copied by Rowan and all the counters get copied by Doubling Season). So the next time Selvala gets untapped from Lodge, it will generate a LOT more mana since Heroe's Bane itself grows exponentially.
This is MUCH more than 3 layers.
If I'm not mistaken, every single untap of Unbender Tine should actually add X layers, so we will get a LOT of layers. So many layers that we would need arrow notations to count them.
Because every copy of an Isochron activation will essentially translate Heroe's Bane's power into a much larger number of creatures entering the battlefield, every one of which triggers multiple layers of Selvala untaps and every Selvala untap exponentially grows Heroe's Bane. And since we can recast a spell for just 5 mana, we can essentially push our TYS spell count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power, so the next copy of the Scepter avility will be incredibly more powerful.
Of course that last interaction would be gone without Horde of Notion, but Djinn Illuminatus works just as well.
Oh and I think it's safe to replace Make a Wish with Echo of Eons, which is strictly better AND has flashback once we're out of other self exiling recursion spells.
Each Heroes' Bane ability multiplies Heroes' Bane's power by (2^D + 1), where D is the number of Doubling Seasons. So it takes X power to (2^D + 1)^X. Each activation of Heroes' Bane gets copied K times if we have K emblems created by Rowan Kenrith, so it will take an exponential tower of length N to length N + K. While this is better than exponentation, it is not as good as tetration (X -> 2^^X), and the advantage over exponentation will disappear as we go up in layers. So this is roughly exponentiation, or Layer 1.
Each time we activate Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, we add X*3^N mana, so that we can activate Heroes' Bane (X*3^N)/4 times, getting (X*3^N)/4 abilities, so that we add (K*X*3^N)/4 exponents to whatever exponential chain we have. Again, this is slightly better than tetration, but worse than pentation, so this is Layer 2.
Each Wirewood Lodge activation gets copied K times by Rowan Kenrith, so we get K+1 untappings of Selvala from the activation. Each Magus of the Candelabra activation gets copied K times by Rowan Kenrith, and each ability untaps all W Wirewood Lodges, so we untap Wirewood Lodge W(K+1) times, leading to W(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. Each Selvala gets us a tetration, so this is roughly 2^^^W(K+1)^2. Again, while repeating tetration a constant number of times is better than tetration, it is still not as good as pentation, which is X -> 2^^^X. So this is still Layer 2.
Each time a copy of Spiritual Visit resolves, we get 2^D new tokens, each of which acivates all I Intruder Alarms, each of which gets copied Y times by Yarok, the Desecrated. Each of those abilities untaps all M copies of Magus of the Candalabra. So each copy of Spiritual Visit results in 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. This is still a constant number of Selvala activations, so we are still at Layer 2.
Each time we cast a Spiritual Visit via Isochron Scepter, it gets triggered all Tys copies of Thousand-Year Storm, each of which generates a number of copies equal to our storm count. The number of TYSes is fixed, but our storm count keeps increasing, thanks to repeatedly casting Consuming Bonfire from the graveyard. We get (Tys*Sc+1) copies of Spiritual Visit, for (Tys*Sc+1)* 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2 untappings of Selvala. Since Sc increases proportionally with our amount of mana, this is pentation (X -> 2^^^X), or Layer 3.
Each time we activate Unbender Tine, it gets copied Ku times by Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient. Each copy untaps Isochron Scepter, which also gets copied Ku times. So this is (Ku+1)^2 castings of Spiritual Visit, or (Ku+1)^2 pentations. This is slower growing than hexation, so we are still at Layer 3.
So, assuming that the other variables are fixed throughout the resolution of an activation of an Unbending Tine (besides Heroes' Bane's power and the storm count), we get a fixed number of pentations for each activation of Unbending Tine.
I know this is probably disappointing; it takes a little while to get a feel for how up arrows work, and how to best handle the recursion.
I will take a look at the rest of the combo in a bit.
Edit: Corrected the above after noticing you were casting Consuming Bonfire to increase the storm count.
As a simple example, lets say your base combo is that spending a red mana doubles the value of X, spending a green mana generates X red mana, and spending a white mana generates X green mana. As X actually increases as the combo progresses, it's really referring to a different value each time. Say it starts off as 3, and you have 2 white mana. The combo looks like:
Spend a white mana, get 3 green mana
- Spend a green mana, get 3 red mana
- Spend a red mana, set X to 6
- Spend a red mana, set X to 12
- Spend a red mana, set X to 24
- Spend a green mana, get 24 red mana
- Repeat this 24 times: Spend a red mana, set X to 2X. Overall, X becomes about 2^24
- Spend a green mana, get 2^24 red mana
- Repeat: Spend a red mana, set X to 2X - overall, X becomes 2^2^24
[By this point, the action of spending a green mana can be shortcut to setting X to 2^X]
- Spend a white mana, get 2^2^24 green mana
- Repeat that many times: Spend a green mana to set X to 2^X. Overall, X becomes 2^^X
And so on, each layer adding an up arrow.
Your sequence, if it worked as intended, would be somewhere between 8 an 10 layers.
There are ways to get X layers, but they are much more intricate.
However, this issue with your sequence is that parts of it don't scale - which is why I only counted 3 layers. (there might be a few more). Unless I'm missing something, once a creature or enchantment is on the battlefield, you aren't making more copies of it until much later in the sequence. Same with rowan embelems - although you are reusing rowan later in the sequence, you aren't making more embelems every time you run though this part of the combo.
Imagine if in my example layer system the step was instead "spend a green mana to make 1000 red mana". Then, you can see that once X reaches 1000 (which it does quickly), I'm worse off than in my original combo. Now if you imagine the step was "spend a green mana to make an amount of red mana equal to the number of creatures you control", and a later step was "spend a blue mana to make X creatures", where blue mana was only used in a much later sequence, then I'm really in the same sequence - say before I use any blue mana, I can make 1000 creatures, then I'm in the same situation; then later in the sequence I spend a blue mana to make (say) 2^^^^1000 creatures; which appears to make the lower sequence slightly better, but still not as good as a proper layer would have been for the same reason The final count is going to get much bigger than 2^^^1000 so that factor didn't really do much.
This is basically what you're doing with embelems and other stuff.
Edit: Deedlit's post is exploins what exactly is going on here - you're repeating things a number of times described by expressions like 2^D*I*(Y+1)*M*W*(K+1)^2, but none of those numbers are actually proportional to X, which if they wore it would be worth more layers. In the next step, the expression involved the storm count, which IS proportional to X, so it is worth a layer.
Edit: Looking at the rest of the combo, it looks like we get (assuming that the infinites are fixed):
Layer 4: Heroes' Bane dealing damage in combat with lifelink will gain us a lot of life, which can be used to return Wydwen, the Biting Gale many times (not sure how this continues the combo without Magister of Worth, but let's suppose that that is fixed).
Layer 5: Casting [c}Waves of Aggression[/c] gets us many combat phases thanks to Thousand-Year Storm or Djinn Illuminatus.
There are other "potential" layers in that part of the combo, but they are all based on the number of a particular permanent/emblem, so they don't scale properly. There are also many potential layers after Waves of Aggression, but they don't work, because we can't hold on to the stack when we enter and leave combat.
A possible solution is to get rid of the combat part of the combo. If we replace Second Sunrise with, say, Heliod's Intervention, that skips some combo pieces, but at least it allows us to gain layers later on. Then we get:
Layer 4: Casting Heliod's Intervention gains us a lot of life, to be spent on Wydwen.
Layer 5: Casting Surreal Memoir can retrieve Heliod's Intervention many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 6: Activating Chandra Ablaze allows us to cast Surreal Memoir many times, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
Layer 7: Activating Nissa, Vital Force allows us to retrieve Chandra Ablaze many times, thanks to Repeated Reverberation. (As previously mentioned, Nissa's ability is targeted. But, after all the Repeated Reverberation triggers go on the stack, they are resolved one at a time. Each time, this puts a copy of Nissa's loyalty ability on the stack, which at that point targets Chadra Ablaze in the graveyard. Chandra is retrieved, and we can destroy it again before the next RR trigger is resolved. So this will still get a layer.)
I'm not sure how we are destroying planeswalkers in this deck, but presumably it is not so difficult to do.
Layer 8: Casting Eerie Ultimatum will get many copies and bring back Nissa, Vital Force many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 9: Casting Make a Wish will get many copies and retrieve Eerie Ultimatum many times, thanks to TYS or DI.
Layer 10: Activating Holistic Wisdom and exiling a sorcery card will allow us to retrieve Make a Wish many times, thanks to Rowan Kenrith emblems. This time the emblems do scale, since we can use Nissa to retrieve Rowan Kenrith and activate her many times.
So, this will get us about 2 -> N+2 -> 11, where N is the number of sorcery cards we can exile to activate Holistic Wisdom.
Edit: Oh, I guess with whatever Ancalagon is using to destroy their planeswalkers, they can destroy Nissa with RR triggers from its ability on the stack, and then they can return Nissa from the graveyard to their hand, and replay it. So that goes infinite.
Taking out Nissa will drop the final damage to 2 -> N+2 -> 10.
First off, welcome Ancalagon91, always nice to see a new name here.
As to your deck, I think the other posts have already explained whats going on there, and their estimations are probably better than mine.
As for the Waterclock deck:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
9 Desolation Giant
10 March of the Machines
11 Goblin Boom Keg
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Satyr's Cunning
22 Mana Echoes
23 Stern Proctor
24 Simian Spirit Guide
25 Spellweaver Helix
26 Seismic Spike
27 Worldpurge
28 Gerrard's Verdict
29 Flash of Defiance
30 Flash of Defiance
31 Flash of Defiance
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Drownyard Temple
34 Wormfang Behemoth
36 Show and Tell
37 Omniscience
38 Words of Wisdom
39 Chameleon Blur
40 Leyline of Punishment
We have a full third of the deck empty, and some of the others cards could be cut or changed to fit an improvement.
Soul sculptor looks like a promising way to preserve creatures for later.
But what if every Scepter activation would increase the number of Doubling Seasons, Molten Echoes, etc? If Repudiate//Replicate was imprinted and we had Djinn Illuminatus, we could copy replicate Replicate up to (x-1)/3 times where X is Heroe's Bane's power to alternately copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes and Yarok, the Desecrated.
(Ignore for the moment that this would create all sorts of infinite combos in the current deck, the decklist would have to change significantly)
And the original spell cast from the Scepter could target a Precursor Golem and use Xenograft to turn everything into Golems so that everything else (Kurkesh, Nyxbloom Ancient, etc) also gets copied.
In that case, every untap of Unbender Tine should add a bunch of layers, right?
But yes, being able to create X copies of different creatures at a low level would certainly help with turning some of those "potential layers" into actual layers. (not the ones depending on Rowan Kenrith emblems, of course) However, each new combo would be a new layer for that combo, it wouldn't be a case of each untapping of Unbender Tine adding a bunch of layers, or even a single layer. The way it works is, if you have a certain procedure A that achieves N layers, then if you create a new procedure B that repeats procedure A X number of times, and refreshes the number that A depends on each time it is repeated, then procedure B would be layer N+1. It is also possible to create a procedure that turns X of a resource into X layers, but those have to be created in a very specific manner; you don't just get them by adding more recursion to the combo. We haven't seen a situation where activating an ability adds some number of layers each time you do it.
@Deedlit:
Going over every layer in 3090:
Angelheart Vial,Rings of Brighthearth,Howling Gale,Boon Reflection
Probably intended: 1 damage = X vials trigger; 1 vial = X copies of the life gain ability; 1 copy of the ability = X life - 3 layers
Reality: Boon reflection breaks the hyperstage, so can't be used. Vials also get reset in between worldpurges. 1 damage = X vials trigger, which all must be used before the worldpurge, so just gain X life - 1 layer.
If vials can be protected by soul scuplptor (or a pretty convoluted phasing setup) then it's 2 layers.
A concern is that vials might be able given to the opponent via mirrorweave - is that an issue?
Finally, the layer trigger, Howling Gale, doesn't work since we don't have access yet to green mana.
Ashcloud Phoenix could be an option? It would be able to leave behind a morph during a computation, but that should be OK since morphs have no creature types so it would quickly die.
Mournful Zombie
1 white = X copies of ability = X opponent life - 1 layer (without the boon reflection)
This works, although it needs to be given haste so the Marchessa's Smuggler and Eye of Ramos need to be used here.
Plains, Caged Sun, Amulet of Vigor
Intended: 1 plains ETB = X amulet triggers; 1 amulet trigger = X white mana - 2 layers.
Reality: The plains gets bounced by the worldpurge, making the amulet triggers do nothing. 1 plains ETB = X white - 1 layer.
Firebrand ranger
1 green = X plains - 1 layer - this works
Gaea's Cradle: Same issue as the plains. 1 layer rather than 2.
Helldozer - I'm not sure how this actually reuses the cradle
Lotus Petal, Morturary
1 card draw = play lotus petal with March out, remove March before DN triggers; X mana - 1 layer - works
Dragon Appeasement, Pitchstone Wall, Curse of Chaos
Intended: 1 combat step = X discards; 1 discard = X sacrifices; 1 sacrifice = X draws
Reality: Things that trigger on discard don't work for 2 reasons. Firstly, in this deck we're using Gerrard's Verdict. The deck in 3090 wasn't, but it still wouldn't have worked for the second reason: The cleanup step is an infinite discard outlet, since discarding to handsize, if it triggers an ability, gives players priority after which there's another cleanup phase. Only works if somehow the setup were to require casting a spell that gave no max handsize for the rest of the game.
Finest Hour, World at War - each make X combats - works.
@deedlit: Worldpurge also clears mana pools, so the plains/gaea's cradle with Amulet of Vigor and caged sun generate a whole bunch of mana, but we need to convert it all before Worldpurging, so we don't get full effect of everything above increasing our conversion.
@jfb: If we use the cleanup step as an infinite discard outlet, we can't attack for the win, so that's not a problem, though Gerrard's Verdict would still be a discard outlet.