yeah most shuffle effects are optional too and dies effects like protean hulk/rootless yew are all green, except for whirlpool drake which seems like it draws too many cards.
Edit: donate allows them to have white mana activate aegis automaton during computation, not sure if we can give control of the ordeal over without giving them lands...
Whirlpool Drake doesn't seem like it draws to many cards, as it draws as many as we shuffle in, so the net effect is zero. But, we can kill it during a computation, so we can trigger the shuffling cheaply. Same with Ancestral Knowledge.
Yeah, Aura Thief looks like it works. Doubling Season gets us a layer for token copies of Black Lotus, and is helpful in getting [c}Dack Fayden[/c] to his ultimate.
So, let's see... Switching from Jester's Mask to Ordeal of Nylea loses us a layer from not using Kurkesh (no way to get a Harmonic Prodigy layer from this it looks like), and a layer from Moraug untapping many times, which does nothing if we need to attack. Also, we lose a layer from having to drop World at War. So down to 8 layers?
The Tamiyo's Journal deck loses a layer from when I last counted, due to not having Arcane Adaptation to give Tamiyo's Journal a creature type. But still 9 layers, so that version looks like the leader at the moment.
oh right dack ult is pretty tied to doubling season.
Ordeal of Nylea is even worse than I thought, as their attack triggers will fizzle after a computation and they won't be around to sacrifice, so we don't get a layer from them.
We can still replace Uproot with Hallowed Ground I guess? The Tamiyo's Journal version has a card left over, so we have enough room to put in Widespread Panic, or another card if there is a better one for putting cards back into the library.
Edit: also looked at other ways of granting creature types, as maybe giving a keg all of the creature types via like volatile claws, keeps it safe and if we bounce the Coat of arms to kill it, we can't do computation.
but we can leave a coat of arms on their side and still half the keg's toughness and kill it.
Edit: I think we can replace Tamiyo's Journal by Search the Premises, for an extra layer. We can donate a bunch of copies of Search the Premises and Doubling Season, and then take back the Clue tokens after the opponent creates them.
Nice, Search the premises seems to work, we have to be a bit careful the opponent doesn't have mana to suicide with, but because this is in combat they lose anything they got from earlier setup computations, and after the first round of computation we don't need to give them a mana echoes. (probably even for the first round too but this is easier to prove)
But, Crucible of the Spirit Dragon should be okay. It can't pay for Hallowed Ground directly, but during the white mana stage, its mana will be converted to regular white mana, via Chrome Mox. So we just need to save two white mana for Hallowed Ground every once in a while.
And all of the more general reclaims and similar allow blue sun's zenith to draw itself which will be a problem i think, as we'd no longer need the clues. (we already have every color of mana before card draw so reclaim to get mana from chrome mox is moot.)
I guess cutting BSZ, Hallowed Ground, widespread panic, and Drafna's Restoration for reclaim is an option to save card slots if we can find some smaller layers.
Getting started with just the Zubera seems difficult though, as it is hard to kill.
I guess if we can prove that it ends up in the yard, then it can't be used as a blue creature for chrome mox mana?
Edit:
If search the premises is our only other card draw then its clear to me that FDZ needs to get sent to the yard, as even getting one clue to sacrifice requires search, opalescence, wrong turn, smuggler, dack, doubling season, and artificial evolution, which is already all 7 of our opening hand, not to mention that we'd need the mana to do all of that.
This opens up the lines we discussed earlier as real possibilities:
lotus, show, omni
archive
dual nature
FDZ
Gaint
draw 8
march of the machines
orrery
shrine
opalescence
bloodbond march
mana echoes
soul separator
drake familiar
should be enough to get started
next zubera draws 6 (make + kill asap while comboing above)
doubling season
copy enchantment
TYS
pull from eternity (need to pull giant and zubera)
?panharmonicon
?drafna's restoration
39 cards left
dead types count:
zubera=3
giant=some
drake=?
if we have 2 doubling season in play we can make 4 zubera, then we get 4*14 card draw with the next giant, enough to draw the whole deck and start using drafna's restoration on lotus. This seems safe
We can also go harder and make 8 zubera for 8*(11*2) and bounce the archive when we are close to decking.
We don't get every type fully from FDZ, but we only need ~12 for computation, and we can use zubera giant and drake in there so we still have a bunch of fresh types.
Edit: harmonic prodigy also works on FDZ dies trigger, so we can get an extra layer's worth of bonus card draw.
We can even donate FDZ to the opponent and get consecrated sphinx triggers.
Edit:
so for ending layers its currently something like:
...white mana chrome mox stage...
Serra's sanctum/crucible of the spirit dragon taps for X white
Amulet of vigor gives us X taps for each etb
Animist's awakening gives us X etbs for each green
resolving a DN trigger for black lotus gives us X green
casting black lotus gives us X DN triggers
drawing lotus lets us cast it
sacrificing a clue draws x cards
Resolving a secure the Premises trigger makes X clues
attacking into Search the Premises gets X triggers
Each main phase give us X attacks via Moraug.
World at war gives us X main phases.
Yup, and each Clue draw can draw Blue Sun's Zenith, which gets us a bunch of card draws.
So let's see... we currently have 12 artifacts, so with Blue Sun's Zenith we can draw up to 13 at a time. After the first computations, we will have used up 12 creature types, and we can make it so that those creature types include the ones that have died so far. So the remaining 254 - 12 = 242 creature types will be fresh, allowing to kill off an additional 3146 Floating-Dream Zuberas. We should certainly be able to put at least 3147 draw triggers on the stack prior to the first computation, thanks to Harmonic Prodigy, so that plus the additional 3146 FDZ kills will take us to BB_{w^2 + w2 + 7}(3147).
And to use BSZ as our initial card draw we'd need lotus for UUU, mountain chrome mox for more mana, and then we can BSZ for 2, which is not nearly enough to get started.
Yeah, we can't get started with BSZ... it would be nice if we could, say by subbing in Mana Vault, but I don't think that's enough.
I count 10 layers.
Ooh, Void Stalker looks very nice! Let's us put 26 cards into the library rather than 13, getting us 6292 FDZ kills after computation.
Daring Sleuth could be very good, if we didn't get a lot of combat phases after the precombat main phase, since we could get two big triggers during the first combat, one upon attacking, and one after combat damage. But, with a gajillion combat phases, we just go from a gajillion triggers to two gajillion triggers, which isn't a big deal. That's assuming we can get a lot of copies of Bearer of Overwhelming Truths into play. Can we not play Daring Sleuth, and respond to the Dual Nature triggers by sacrificing a Clue?
This means we can't update the number of Harmonic prodigys for Kurkesh between activating the clues, Something like Intangible virtue seems safe to add to fix it? Though that does squeeze out our space for a blue creature...
Yes, good points! Yeah, there's no space for Intangible Virtue unfortunately, since we need another blue crature with Floating-Dream Zubera going to the braveyard, and if we don't use FDZ then we need to replace Uproot, which we currently don't have a 1 card replacement for.
Yeah and we need a good amount of mana early so while I think renowned weaponsmith is close it doesn't quite give us enough for the early soul separator activations.
Looking at Safe Haven, it appears to eliminate the problem of having creatures on our side during a computation, as our creatures won't take any damage, so I don't think they can interfere with an arbitrarily long computation. If we don't cast Safe Haven, then any computation is limited by our life total, so that doesn't go infinite either. Does that open up any new possibilities?
We still have to get rid of Vedalken Orrery, which is not easy to require, so having a creature sweeper to get rid of an animated Goblin Boom Keg seems to be our only way of doing that at the moment. So I'm not seeing anything new. I suppose we could use an artifact sweeper instead of a creature sweeper... but does that give us any advantage?
Yeah, if we control any necromancers during computation we can stack their triggers and arcbond as we choose instead of APNAP forcing the ordering on us.
So we can have arcbond resolve last and proceed with computation as normal (mostly), then after looping an arbitrary amount of time, start having arcbond resolve before our necromancer and have that wind down the computation.
this computation is a bit abnormal as our necromancer tokens don't die due to safe passage, but that effectively only increases the baseline of the clock as it overflows. Then in the end it will still unwind eventually.
Edit: oh xathrid necromancer is you control...
Hmm, need to think on that a bit.
Ordeal of nylea? though that would require something like Simplify, and we'd also need to do something like donate it as wrong turn is creatures only.
Ancestral Knowledge is probably too cheap.
Edit: donate allows them to have white mana activate aegis automaton during computation, not sure if we can give control of the ordeal over without giving them lands...
Aura thief?
Simplify isn't needed as we are going into combat anyway.
Aura thief looks like it works for enabling ordeal of nylea, but is an extra card. Do we still need doubling season?
So, let's see... Switching from Jester's Mask to Ordeal of Nylea loses us a layer from not using Kurkesh (no way to get a Harmonic Prodigy layer from this it looks like), and a layer from Moraug untapping many times, which does nothing if we need to attack. Also, we lose a layer from having to drop World at War. So down to 8 layers?
The Tamiyo's Journal deck loses a layer from when I last counted, due to not having Arcane Adaptation to give Tamiyo's Journal a creature type. But still 9 layers, so that version looks like the leader at the moment.
Ordeal of Nylea is even worse than I thought, as their attack triggers will fizzle after a computation and they won't be around to sacrifice, so we don't get a layer from them.
Also there's still the Show and tell + uproot problem
We can still replace Uproot with Hallowed Ground I guess? The Tamiyo's Journal version has a card left over, so we have enough room to put in Widespread Panic, or another card if there is a better one for putting cards back into the library.
Edit: also looked at other ways of granting creature types, as maybe giving a keg all of the creature types via like volatile claws, keeps it safe and if we bounce the Coat of arms to kill it, we can't do computation.
but we can leave a coat of arms on their side and still half the keg's toughness and kill it.
So we have:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Mana Echoes
22 Soul Separator
23 Urborg Syphon-Mage
24 Thousand-Year Elixir
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Lingering Souls
27 Drake Familiar
28 Safe Passage
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Gravitic Punch
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Recoup
34 Journey for the Elixir
35 Mountain
36 Harmonic Prodigy
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen By the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Alhammarret's Archive
45 Black Lotus
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
48 Lore Broker
49 Marchesa's Smuggler
50 Serra's Sanctum
51 Amulet of Vigor
52 Animist's Awakening
53 Blue Sun's Zenith
54 Tamiyo's Journal
55 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
56 World at War
57 Doubling Season
58 Drafna's Restoration
59 Hallowed Ground
60 Widespread Panic
The obvious inefficiency is Hallowed Ground / Widespread Panic requiring 2 cards to get a land into the library.
Edit: I think we can replace Tamiyo's Journal by Search the Premises, for an extra layer. We can donate a bunch of copies of Search the Premises and Doubling Season, and then take back the Clue tokens after the opponent creates them.
But, Crucible of the Spirit Dragon should be okay. It can't pay for Hallowed Ground directly, but during the white mana stage, its mana will be converted to regular white mana, via Chrome Mox. So we just need to save two white mana for Hallowed Ground every once in a while.
Glowspore shaman is even better than Hallowed ground, and doesn't need widespread panic.
edit: oops but its a green creature :/
I guess cutting BSZ, Hallowed Ground, widespread panic, and Drafna's Restoration for reclaim is an option to save card slots if we can find some smaller layers.
I guess if we can prove that it ends up in the yard, then it can't be used as a blue creature for chrome mox mana?
Edit:
If search the premises is our only other card draw then its clear to me that FDZ needs to get sent to the yard, as even getting one clue to sacrifice requires search, opalescence, wrong turn, smuggler, dack, doubling season, and artificial evolution, which is already all 7 of our opening hand, not to mention that we'd need the mana to do all of that.
This opens up the lines we discussed earlier as real possibilities:
lotus, show, omni
archive
dual nature
FDZ
Gaint
draw 8
march of the machines
orrery
shrine
opalescence
bloodbond march
mana echoes
soul separator
drake familiar
should be enough to get started
next zubera draws 6 (make + kill asap while comboing above)
doubling season
copy enchantment
TYS
pull from eternity (need to pull giant and zubera)
?panharmonicon
?drafna's restoration
39 cards left
dead types count:
zubera=3
giant=some
drake=?
if we have 2 doubling season in play we can make 4 zubera, then we get 4*14 card draw with the next giant, enough to draw the whole deck and start using drafna's restoration on lotus. This seems safe
We can also go harder and make 8 zubera for 8*(11*2) and bounce the archive when we are close to decking.
We don't get every type fully from FDZ, but we only need ~12 for computation, and we can use zubera giant and drake in there so we still have a bunch of fresh types.
Edit: harmonic prodigy also works on FDZ dies trigger, so we can get an extra layer's worth of bonus card draw.
We can even donate FDZ to the opponent and get consecrated sphinx triggers.
Edit:
so for ending layers its currently something like:
...white mana chrome mox stage...
Serra's sanctum/crucible of the spirit dragon taps for X white
Amulet of vigor gives us X taps for each etb
Animist's awakening gives us X etbs for each green
resolving a DN trigger for black lotus gives us X green
casting black lotus gives us X DN triggers
drawing lotus lets us cast it
sacrificing a clue draws x cards
Resolving a secure the Premises trigger makes X clues
attacking into Search the Premises gets X triggers
Each main phase give us X attacks via Moraug.
World at war gives us X main phases.
So let's see... we currently have 12 artifacts, so with Blue Sun's Zenith we can draw up to 13 at a time. After the first computations, we will have used up 12 creature types, and we can make it so that those creature types include the ones that have died so far. So the remaining 254 - 12 = 242 creature types will be fresh, allowing to kill off an additional 3146 Floating-Dream Zuberas. We should certainly be able to put at least 3147 draw triggers on the stack prior to the first computation, thanks to Harmonic Prodigy, so that plus the additional 3146 FDZ kills will take us to BB_{w^2 + w2 + 7}(3147).
that puts us to 10 or 11 layers at the end?
Updated decklist:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Mana Echoes
22 Soul Separator
23 Urborg Syphon-Mage
24 Thousand-Year Elixir
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Lingering Souls
27 Drake Familiar
28 Safe Passage
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Gravitic Punch
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Recoup
34 Journey for the Elixir
35 Mountain
36 Harmonic Prodigy
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen By the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Alhammarret's Archive
45 Black Lotus
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
48 Floating-Dream Zubera
49 Marchesa's Smuggler
50 Serra's Sanctum
51 Amulet of Vigor
52 Animist's Awakening
53 Blue Sun's Zenith
54 Search the Premises
55 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
56 World at War
57 Doubling Season
58 Drafna's Restoration
59 Uproot
60 storm crow
I think this is not currently working as we need a new CMC 2 blue creature now as FDZ needs to die in the setup. (currently storm crow)
Edit: we don't *need* widespread panic anymore, it just lets us draw more cards at once.
Maybe Void stalker is the best option? lets us FDZ more.
Some other options are Daring sleuth now that we actually can flip it to bearer of overwhelming truths
Maybe even the 1 shot erdwal illuminator?
Edit: Daring sleuth doesn't work very well as the timing on flipping it is pretty bad. (and token copies wont flip)
I count 10 layers.
Ooh, Void Stalker looks very nice! Let's us put 26 cards into the library rather than 13, getting us 6292 FDZ kills after computation.
Daring Sleuth could be very good, if we didn't get a lot of combat phases after the precombat main phase, since we could get two big triggers during the first combat, one upon attacking, and one after combat damage. But, with a gajillion combat phases, we just go from a gajillion triggers to two gajillion triggers, which isn't a big deal. That's assuming we can get a lot of copies of Bearer of Overwhelming Truths into play. Can we not play Daring Sleuth, and respond to the Dual Nature triggers by sacrificing a Clue?
Oh another problem: March of the machines kills clues.
This means we can't update the number of Harmonic prodigys for Kurkesh between activating the clues, Something like Intangible virtue seems safe to add to fix it? Though that does squeeze out our space for a blue creature...
So, down to 9 layers.
(and definitely doesn't pay for Lingering Souls)
I guess cutting three cards for regrowth to make room for Intangible virtue would be worth it now?
Oh, no that doesnt even work as we cant be able to give them white mana, so we can't use intangible virtue
Looking at Safe Haven, it appears to eliminate the problem of having creatures on our side during a computation, as our creatures won't take any damage, so I don't think they can interfere with an arbitrarily long computation. If we don't cast Safe Haven, then any computation is limited by our life total, so that doesn't go infinite either. Does that open up any new possibilities?
We still have to get rid of Vedalken Orrery, which is not easy to require, so having a creature sweeper to get rid of an animated Goblin Boom Keg seems to be our only way of doing that at the moment. So I'm not seeing anything new. I suppose we could use an artifact sweeper instead of a creature sweeper... but does that give us any advantage?
So we can have arcbond resolve last and proceed with computation as normal (mostly), then after looping an arbitrary amount of time, start having arcbond resolve before our necromancer and have that wind down the computation.
this computation is a bit abnormal as our necromancer tokens don't die due to safe passage, but that effectively only increases the baseline of the clock as it overflows. Then in the end it will still unwind eventually.
Edit: oh xathrid necromancer is you control...
Hmm, need to think on that a bit.