Thanks for the tip. I'd already refined it, replacing Praetor's Council with Feldon's Cane, more Cranial Archive and Alchemist's Apprentice to get value from Mirrorworks. Also, some things were left over from earlier failed ideas (Grimgrin).
Step 1: Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite.
Step 2: Opalescence, alternate 4x Dual Nature and 4x Doubling Season. 4x Clever Impersonator and 4x Copy Enchantment on nothing, all the tokens alternate Lives and Season. Clever Impersonator dies, that's fine, the token copies are named Dual Nature and Doubling Season so they stay.
Step 3: Precursor Golem, Xenograft naming Golem.
Step 4: Cast Vernal Equinox, then summon Bloodflow Connoisseur. Sacrifice one original Copy Enchantment to Bloodflow. Summon Monk Idealist, respond to each ETB trigger with Copy Enchantment. Repeat for next 3 Monk Idealists, 4 Auramancers and 4 Griffin Dreamfinders.
Step 5: Battle Hymn for a ton of mana, sac one Copy Enchantment, kicked Rite of Replication, 4x Increasing Vengeance on Rite of Replication (save flashback Vengeance for last iteration), respond to each enchantment reanimation trigger with Copy Enchantment and sac.
Step 6: 4x Deja Vu, 4x Mystic Retreival (save flashback) and 4x Call to Mind on Rite of Replication. Then sac all the spent enchantment reanimators, all four Copy Enchantments and Opalescence to Bloodflow.
Step 7: Play Mirrorworks and Alchemist's Apprentice. Sac all the Apprentice tokens to Bloodflow, then cast Feldon's Cane. Sac real Apprentice and respond with Cane, reshuffling then drawing Enter the Infinite putting Lotus on top, recast the Clever Impersonators and Copy Enchantments, then repeat steps 4-6. Repeat step 7 for all the tokens and the other 3 Feldon's Cane in hand.
Step 8: Same as step 7 but with 2x Cranial Archive. Archive draws a card, so you can get one more load of counters on Bloodflow Connoisseur using the real Apprentice. On the very last repetition, flashback Increasing Vengeance and Mystic Retrieval for extra Rite of Replication uses.
Step 9: Use all red mana to cast Unwilling Recruit. Attack with everything. Like in the original, Savage Beating.
Regarding the deck with sideboard, it makes sense to go back to the older version with Splinter Twin rather than the Dual Nature version, so that we can use instants/sorceries at the end.
I can't think of anything new for the 60 card deck. If you want to make a writeup go for it. If I can help somehow feel free to ask.
For that sideboard version I see some required card changes:
- Karplusan Yeti has to be replaced because of the lifegain layer; just a formality I guess.
- Emrakul needs to go for Reito Lantern to make the Pain Magnification work; is that cheap enough for the start, or would some other option be necessary?
- Something needs to let the opponent survive the Repercussion layer. At that point Donate should be available so I think anything that lets the opponent not die could replace Akroan Horse.
If my layer count is right this one gets to ... -> 2 -> 15, which is kinda underwhelming when compared to the ... -> 60 -> 4 for the 60 card version. 14 additional cards should pack more oomph.
By the way, is that ... -> 60 -> 4 estimate correct? As far as I can tell we have 59 discards, so to get the 60 we need to make ... -> 1 -> 4 Sangromancers before we let the opponent discard the first time. Before that point we only have +1/+1 counters from Selvala's Enforcer and no other hasty way to target anything above the white mana stage. Obviously that amount is quite limited, especially considering that for the start we need to bounce the enforcer a few times before we can even use the counters. I feel like there should be enough, but the number of targeting abilities needed to get the Ackermann stages going for the first time, and the number of +1/+1 counters available before the first discard should be close enough to need a more accurate count.
Ok, I've been suffering over this one in silence long enough to forsake my ego and ask for help.
I'm still in my mind doing Ackermann explosions with Possibility Storm, but it is a hell of a lot easier than I was making it. All the cards left over from my non-Ackermann list were just interference. It's really very simple to imitate the basic Bloodbond March setup with Possibility Storm. You just need Omniscience, Cowardice, something to target (I'll use Rats of Rath as an example), something to make mana off of discarding (Skirge Familiar), Wheel of Sun and Moon, and a ton of Possibility Storms. Likely use the good old Opalescence/Doubling Season/Dual Nature combination for that. So skipping the set-up and going straight to the Ackermann part:
Cast a creature or enchantment, get a pile of Possibility Storm triggers
First trigger finds nothing, puts the spell you cast into the library
Second trigger casts the spell you cast, puts it into play.
Pay 1 black into Rats of Rath to target it and return it to your hand
[Possibly cast it again to make the skack grow]
Discard the card to make 1 black with Skirge Familiar
Wheel of Sun and Moon puts it back into the deck where the next Possibility Storm trigger finds it
It's really just a direct conversion of the Bloodbond March Ackermann set-up, so nothing groundbreaking about it. And it even comes with a steep downside that Possibility Storm does not discriminate between cards of the same card type, so strings of things that can only target one direction in the chain won't work because Possibility Storm provides an avenue by which one creature can be cast to get more of another regardless of its position in the chain.
BUT! What Possibility Storm does that Bloodbond March doesn't is interact with all the other card types. For example, with a lot of Possibility Storms out and Wheel of Sun and Moon enchanting you, any instant or sorcery can by cast repeatedly proportional to the Possibility Storms. Adding in a simple Dark Ritual to the above scenario will trigger each Possibility Storm, and then every trigger after the first will find Dark Ritual, cast it, and upon resolving it goes back into the library from Wheel of Sun and Moon to be found by the next Possibility Storm. At the end, it's stuck in the library, and any limited method of drawing it back out would let you do it again.
I want to Ackermann that draw. If we could find a limited way to spend a resource redrawing an instant or sorcery and replenish the resource only once for each time we cast it from our hand, we could hit a new high. If, for example, there was a safe way to use Dark Ritual as the instant and redraw it only as many times as we cast it from hand -1, each casting of Dark Ritual would make black mana for each Possibility Storm, effectively transitioning the creature Ackermann to itself, so if the redraw mechanism was something like Yawgmoth's Bargain and limited life gain, there'd be a stack of Ackermann stages equal to the amount of life we started with. And that could be way more than the 25 or so you have right now. We'd have Ackermann'd the Ackermann.
But I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'm pretty confident a way to do it exists, though, especially since artifacts, planeswalkers, and lands are free space. And the creature targeting method is flexible, and any instant or sorcery that makes a resource is an option. The most interesting thing I've found so far is spells with additional costs need to have their additional cost paid, or like an instant with buyback could be used to dig a ritual out of the deck and then be bought back if we could only pay the buyback in a limited way. I've considered things like eggs that redraw themselves but need colored mana to do it, or maybe something silly with Strionic Resonator. I've heavily considered Mind's Desire, as with one Possibility Storm, Wheel of Sun and Moon, and the storm count from getting Omniscience, Leyline of Anticipation, Possibility Storm, and Wheel of Sun and Moon on board in the first place, Mind's Desire could hit itself on each of its storm from hand copies and empty the entire deck without need for any mass draw effect. I even spent a day trying to work Mizzium Transreliquat in as a way to restrict timing by making only the colorless mana plentifully available. But this is where I'm stuck.
Any ideas?
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
That Possibility Storm Ackermann stage still needs something like Psychic Battle so that one activation of the Rats of Rath can be used multiple times to bounce the card whenever the stack clears down to this point. Without it, after spending 100 mana recasting that card you just have possibility storm triggers on the stack, with nothing to seperate them into the different layers. It doesn't matter to the trigger whether it was created on the first cast or on the 74th.
Adding Psychic Battle and recasting the card 100 times would create a stack of alternating psychic battle and possibility storm trigger layers. After running those layers out of all but one trigger you can then go through them: bounce using one trigger, discard for mana, get the card to the battlefield using the next trigger, repeat. This builds up mana depending on how many layers you go through this way. So now what seperates a trigger of the first cast from a trigger of the 74th cast is that the former can have 99 mana floating when it resolves while the latter will only have 26 mana floating.
That distinction works exactly like in the Bloodbond March setup. It might be possible to replace psychic battle with something else as well, but some distinction between the layers is necessary.
------
Now for the more important part: a flexible amount of Ackermann stages. The idea is to have one stage where you have 1 life whenever you work on it, one stage where you have 2 life, ... , one with 24 life and so on, right? (using life as an example)
Transitioning form the 2 life stage to the one life stage is done by spending one life to draw the dark ritual and casting it from hand to get a lot of black mana. After going through the 1 life stage you want to gett back into the 2 life stage, so you use the fact that you cast that dark ritual from hand to replenish one life. You continue on in the 2 life stage until its time to get into the 1 life stage again, at which point you pay that life again.
But what is stopping you from reclaiming the life of that Dark Ritual cast immediately, before going through the 1 life stage? You could do that as often as you want and build up an arbitrary amount of mana. I think in addition to reclaiming the life at the point in the stack where you cast dark ritual from hand you also need to make it a requirement that you clear the mana pool whenever you do so. I'd be surprised if there is a way to do that.
I like the concept of all the stages working to increase the number of Possibility Storm and converting that into the input for the stage only in the transitions. My previous attempts to get a variable amount of stages always had the stage produce the input for the next stage directly. This seems easier to work with. Although thinking about it that also requires some mechanism to ensure that the transition can only be used in the lowest layer of the N life stage, and only a limited amount of times per resolution of that layer. That is because the possibility storms don't actually get converted into mana, but remain on the battlefield. So repeatedly going through the 1 life stage without working on the 2 life stage in between would result in going infinite. Maybe you need to spend a psychic battle trigger as well as a life to draw that dark ritual. But then you need to make sure that the trigger used is really from the 2 life stage and not from the 1 life stage... gaahr
Thinking about repeating Ackermann stages I always get bogged down in mechanics like that until it gets way too complicated to be found in actual cards.
The problem of clearing the mana pool might be too hard, but if you can use tokens as a resource for powering the stage maybe the transition can force a Dual Nature trigger. (That might be just me thinking too close to the current deck instead of being properly creative.)
That distinction works exactly like in the Bloodbond March setup. It might be possible to replace psychic battle with something else as well, but some distinction between the layers is necessary.
You're right. A bunch of Psychic Battles and a bunch of Possibility Storms in that setup goes infinite just by using 1 mana to bounce 2 creatures to discard for 2 mana and get them both back, so some adjustment needs to be made. But it's probably a lot easier to keep a million Psychic Battles and just make the targeting ability in such a way that it can only target the one thing we want to bounce up and down.
Now for the more important part: a flexible amount of Ackermann stages. The idea is to have one stage where you have 1 life whenever you work on it, one stage where you have 2 life, ... , one with 24 life and so on, right? (using life as an example)
Transitioning form the 2 life stage to the one life stage is done by spending one life to draw the dark ritual and casting it from hand to get a lot of black mana. After going through the 1 life stage you want to gett back into the 2 life stage, so you use the fact that you cast that dark ritual from hand to replenish one life. You continue on in the 2 life stage until its time to get into the 1 life stage again, at which point you pay that life again.
But what is stopping you from reclaiming the life of that Dark Ritual cast immediately, before going through the 1 life stage? You could do that as often as you want and build up an arbitrary amount of mana. I think in addition to reclaiming the life at the point in the stack where you cast dark ritual from hand you also need to make it a requirement that you clear the mana pool whenever you do so. I'd be surprised if there is a way to do that.
I like the concept of all the stages working to increase the number of Possibility Storm and converting that into the input for the stage only in the transitions. My previous attempts to get a variable amount of stages always had the stage produce the input for the next stage directly. This seems easier to work with. Although thinking about it that also requires some mechanism to ensure that the transition can only be used in the lowest layer of the N life stage, and only a limited amount of times per resolution of that layer. That is because the possibility storms don't actually get converted into mana, but remain on the battlefield. So repeatedly going through the 1 life stage without working on the 2 life stage in between would result in going infinite. Maybe you need to spend a psychic battle trigger as well as a life to draw that dark ritual. But then you need to make sure that the trigger used is really from the 2 life stage and not from the 1 life stage... gaahr
Thinking about repeating Ackermann stages I always get bogged down in mechanics like that until it gets way too complicated to be found in actual cards.
The problem of clearing the mana pool might be too hard, but if you can use tokens as a resource for powering the stage maybe the transition can force a Dual Nature trigger. (That might be just me thinking too close to the current deck instead of being properly creative.)
Drawing from Yawgmoth's Bargain is almost certainly not going to work as the actual thing because life is too fluid a resource, it was just the easiest explanation in my mind for a process that hasn't actually been invented yet. Right now, I really am putting most of my hope into casting a buyback sorcery into Possibility Storm into Mind's Desire to cast a ritual a bunch of times because all the storm copies have to resolve as a batch process before Mind's Desire leaves the stack and is accessible again. And buyback costs actually needing to be paid puts a natural limit on how many times it can be done.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
There are much better things to be Flashing in than Protean Hulk. For instance, Academy Rector, which can bring out Omniscience. Flash isn't banned in Vintage, only restricted, but there are still much better things to do with your time.
That Disciple of the Vault package is far from optimal for a number of reasons: it never causes any "damage" at all, only life loss; the life loss is in increments of 1 at a time so the game will end abruptly while 28 triggers remain unresolved on the stack; and you've only used 4 of the allotted 6 mana. For instance, you could focus on the 0-mana creatures that do stay alive: 4 each of Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker, Memnite, Dryad Arbor, Crimson Kobolds, Crookshank Kobolds, and Kobolds of Kher Keep (28 creatures--you could also add Shield Sphere but it wouldn't do any good here since it has defender). To go with that, add Hellraiser Goblin (3) and Mirror Entity (3). Tap all four Dryad Arbors for mana since they now have haste, pay for Mirror Entity's ability at X=4, and swing with the 26 untapped 4/4 creatures for 104 damage. And still these two- and three-digits numbers don't get you very far in the grand scheme of things.
There are much better things to be Flashing in than Protean Hulk. For instance, Academy Rector, which can bring out Omniscience. Flash isn't banned in Vintage, only restricted, but there are still much better things to do with your time.
That Disciple of the Vault package is far from optimal for a number of reasons: it never causes any "damage" at all, only life loss; the life loss is in increments of 1 at a time so the game will end abruptly while 28 triggers remain unresolved on the stack; and you've only used 4 of the allotted 6 mana. For instance, you could focus on the 0-mana creatures that do stay alive: 4 each of Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker, Memnite, Dryad Arbor, Crimson Kobolds, Crookshank Kobolds, and Kobolds of Kher Keep (28 creatures--you could also add Shield Sphere but it wouldn't do any good here since it has defender). To go with that, add Hellraiser Goblin (3) and Mirror Entity (3). Tap all four Dryad Arbors for mana since they now have haste, pay for Mirror Entity's ability at X=4, and swing with the 26 untapped 4/4 creatures for 104 damage. And still these two- and three-digits numbers don't get you very far in the grand scheme of things.
Wow that is far better than 48 life loss. i just went with one i knew that was not infinite.
maybe i should build this in Modern, just have to use a different way of getting hulk in from the field to the grave. Flash is not in modern after all.
If you're building for an actual, competitive decklist, remember that deck space economy is a thing: you certainly don't want to run a combo that takes up half the slots in your deck. Through the Breach and Footsteps of the Goryo are the two main ways of getting a temporary creature followed by a death trigger, and the most efficient Protean Hulk package weighs in at just 4 cards.
With the first trigger, you grab Viscera Seer and Body Double, where Body Double copies Protean Hulk. Sacrifice the Body Double and you get to fetch another set of creatures, this time Mogg Fanatic (or Death Cultist) and Reveillark. Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to its own ability for 1 to the dome, then sacrifice Reveillark to Viscera Seer just to get a trigger. Now you get to reanimate two creature cards with power 2 or less; choose Mogg Fanatic and Body Double, and this time have the Body Double copy Reveillark. From this point, you can keep sacrificing and reanimating both of those creatures forever, or at least until the opponent loses.
Obviously, since this loop can be repeated without limit, it isn't eligible for consideration in the task at hand. But it does go to show the power of recursion: in this case, being able to use Protean Hulk's ability twice means you can get a more potent set of creatures than if you only used it once. Just plonking down a huge swath of creatures and attacking for 100 or so is nowhere near as effective as building a deck around repeating some operation many times. The growth rate of each repetition is also a factor: in the naive 104-damage package I listed, each additional creature only provides a linear contribution of 4 damage. Meanwhile, if Hulk allowed you to fetch 7 mana worth of creatures rather than 6, you would be able to get Hellraiser Goblin (the cheapest fetchable source of haste) alongside Goldnight Commander, which causes each creature to boost the entire army--a quadratic growth rate, such that you could attack for 882, or even more if you decided to add Shield Sphere or the various X-mana creatures that "come into play dead". Even quadratic growth can be made to look puny within the confines of Magic: the most-cited example of a fast-growing mechanism is Precursor Golem + multiple copies of Rite of Replication, although in some cases a two-mana Sundering Growth is capable of exploding even faster than a nine-mana Rite, and there are mechanisms that can get even faster still. You just have to know where to look, and a game with over 15,000 pieces provides an awful lot of possibilities to look through.
But not in this challenge. First sentence of the thread is "A while back, a group of us addressed the following challenge: Create a 60 card, Vintage legal deck that deals the most damage on turn 1 (assuming that you go first), given that no infinite combos are allowed."
Side note: I was really close to an instant/sorcery ackermann, but then I read Soulfire Grand Master again, and realized you can't use it's ability for a spell cast out of Possibility Storm. Buggers!
Transitioning form the 2 life stage to the one life stage is done by spending one life to draw the dark ritual and casting it from hand to get a lot of black mana. After going through the 1 life stage you want to gett back into the 2 life stage, so you use the fact that you cast that dark ritual from hand to replenish one life. You continue on in the 2 life stage until its time to get into the 1 life stage again, at which point you pay that life again.
But what is stopping you from reclaiming the life of that Dark Ritual cast immediately, before going through the 1 life stage? You could do that as often as you want and build up an arbitrary amount of mana. I think in addition to reclaiming the life at the point in the stack where you cast dark ritual from hand you also need to make it a requirement that you clear the mana pool whenever you do so. I'd be surprised if there is a way to do that.
Glissa Sunseeker + Mana Crypt, with Throne of Bone as our lifegain source? In order to pay for each Throne trigger we need to destroy the crypt using Glissa, and then replay it untapped - but doing so requires that we have 0 mana in our pool.
(Not sure if 60 or not, if not, we can add more useful stuff!)
Here's how it works: Black lotus into a show-and-tell omniscience infinite. Put back Coat of arms back. Play Opalescence, Xenograft (naming golem) and Doubling Season, Then Precursor and Alchemist's apprentice. Cast Eye of the Storm, Seething, and Kick a Rite. Then start hurling the copy spells, starting with Wild Ricochet. Go berserk here, as you will not only copy the Precursor and 3 golem tokens, you copy all the Doubling seasons! With each one producing 6x as many copies as the last, I expect this goes pretty insane. Also note that each time, you copy all previous copy spells, all targeting the kicked Rite. Whoever is counting this, remember that at the end, the Insurrection also triggers all Eye spells. The coat of arms at the end is just an absolute nuke, because you make everything much bigger.
Considering: Curse of Echoes: Your opponent can jump between copy spells all they want, but the rules actually state that if you get to a reset board state, you must do something else instead.
Dont know if this is considered necroposting, but please dont ban me if it is.
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Time Walk 1U: Win target game.
Demonic Tutor 1B: Add a time walk to your hand.
Fork effects are not as useful as additional Rites and other variants like Twinflame. With a Fork, all you do is create a single copy of the spell, and that copy was not "cast" so it never picks up any Precursor triggers. A second copy of the token spell does more than all of the Forks put together, with the exception of getting Eye triggers, a purpose for which they can defer to any blank instant or sorcery: 2 Rite + 39 blanks is better than 1 Rite + 40 Forks. 40 token spells, of course, would be better still, if you're just going for a brute force "do one thing over and over, one card at a time" routine.
Kicking the Rite is also not really a big deal--in fact, given that you have at least 3 copies of Doubling Season (which you will), and at least one token copy of everything important produced by some other means, a mere Sundering Growth with its two-mana cost (that you don't actually have to pay, of course) works out to produce more tokens than paying 5 or 9 mana for a Rite. Yes, even though you are destroying all of your artifacts and enchantments, over and over again. The trick is that Populate is a non-targeted instruction that allows you to produce a token of your most valuable permanent, even on the copies that are nominally "targeting" something else. Here, almost all of the populate steps should go after Doubling Season; you only need to make tokens of anything else once each per round of Precursor Golem spell copies, and only just in time to protect their last surviving specimens from being destroyed by making more tokens that will persist into the next round of copies.
Eye of the Storm and Precursor Golem are also not as much of a combo as would be ideal. You only get a number of Precursor triggers equal to the number of Precursors that exist at the moment the spell becomes cast, and eye of the Storm has you casting multiple spells in succession in the middle of the trigger's resolution, where there is no way to amp up the number of tokens in between casts. You can get a more effective way of scaling by doing away with Eye of the Storm entirely, thereby letting your spells go to the graveyard, then using a sequence of spells that can get each other back from the graveyard (but only in one direction). For example, you could use Sundering Growth to make your tokens, then get that back with Reborn Hope, get Reborn Hope back with Revive, and get Revive back with Mystic Retrieval.
In addition, to get any benefit of scaling at all, you'll want some way of dynamically creating copies of those spells. They don't target permanents, so Precursor Golem doesn't contribute anything at this level, but one neat thing you can do is add an animated Pyromancer Ascension, which you will of course be making token copies of, or else Mirror Gallery + Mirari. In the latter case, you need a source for repeatable generation of mana, since it costs 3 mana per copy of the spell. In the former case, you need ways of "powering up" your Ascensions, because they don't do anything without counters on it, but clearly with Doubling Season you only need 1 trigger per copy to leave it with a lot more than 2 counters. There are a couple different ways of doing this: you could play Mystic Speculation once without buyback, then play another copy with buyback, and for 2 mana you can immediately power up every copy of Ascension that currently exists on the board. There are also a few spells that can return to your hand for free, allowing you to avoid mana altogether: Petals of Insight (although this can potentially interfere with your deck setup, allowing you to go infinite if you have a way to put cards back in the library), Molten Birth, View from Above, and potentially even Titan's Revenge for 0 if you can lose the first clash (or get the initial copy of the spell countered for an illegal target) but then win all the rest. A caveat here is that if you do use spells like Reborn Hope, you can't have any cards that are capable of countering them (such as Odds//Ends), or else you can put it in the graveyard in time for a copy of the spell to return its original self, quickly going infinite.
There's clearly some space for having a few nested operations among instants and sorceries, but the trouble is it's rather limited, and leaves you with a ton of superfluous deck space that isn't appreciably helping. Being able to use that deck space on permanents that have more room for granularity than the broad "Sundering Growth, make lots of copies of everything" will just be more powerful.
Ok, now that I know that doesn't work, Curse of Echoes does, right? If you preform a series of actions A, if it leads back to the board state that made A, then they can no longer do A, so they can only target what you want. So is it a good idea?
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More realism!
Time Walk 1U: Win target game.
Demonic Tutor 1B: Add a time walk to your hand.
Curse of Echoes is optional for the opponent. Unless you're having them cast the original spell somehow, Curse of Echoes is simply a blank, as they'll choose never to create their own copy if creating one would benefit you.
Has anyone looked at Nivmagus Elemental and Eye of the Storm, with a ton of storm cards? You can run as many tendrils and grapeshots as you want, since you're going to be exiling them from the stack, and since each one you cast lets you recast every single previous one. Make some of the spells a way to generate a large amount of non-infinite mana, then use vorel and/or gilder bairn to double all the counters on the elemental, having spells to tap/untap vorel/bairn over and over. I'm not sure if you could use pull from eternity and past in flames in order to replay some spells, but I'm pretty sure that would make the combo infinite if you were playing rituals. You'd probably need something like Manamorphose to turn all the mana into colors you want, which would involve somehow turning on archmage ascension so you don't deck yourself, probably. Unless there's another mana filtering spell that I'm not thinking of. The important thing is that eye of the storm has you playing the copies, so they all add to the storm count.
Actually, is there space for a nivmagus elemental in the current combo? With all those doubling seasons, even exiling a single spell would put on a very large number of counters.
Has anyone looked at Nivmagus Elemental and Eye of the Storm, with a ton of storm cards? You can run as many tendrils and grapeshots as you want, since you're going to be exiling them from the stack, and since each one you cast lets you recast every single previous one. Make some of the spells a way to generate a large amount of non-infinite mana, then use vorel and/or gilder bairn to double all the counters on the elemental, having spells to tap/untap vorel/bairn over and over. I'm not sure if you could use pull from eternity and past in flames in order to replay some spells, but I'm pretty sure that would make the combo infinite if you were playing rituals. You'd probably need something like Manamorphose to turn all the mana into colors you want, which would involve somehow turning on archmage ascension so you don't deck yourself, probably. Unless there's another mana filtering spell that I'm not thinking of. The important thing is that eye of the storm has you playing the copies, so they all add to the storm count.
Actually, is there space for a nivmagus elemental in the current combo? With all those doubling seasons, even exiling a single spell would put on a very large number of counters.
Not really. I'm not entirely sure how many counters exiling a spell would add, but it's not going to do anything compared to adding another Ackermann layer.
Every time I think of posting this to the forums, I think of something else to change that makes the previous amount of damage seem insignificant by comparison, though I think I'm at the end of the road.
I am sad though that my math skills cannot find the proper equation to represent the amount of damage produced.
Also, I apologize for any typo's and general errors in posting this.
Without further delay, my attempt at the most damage on turn 1 in a 60 card Vintage legal list, no sideboard, perfect opening hand.
Step 1:
Mana crypt, Island, Show and Tell, putting Omniscience into play.
Step 2:
Next Opalescence, and Dual Nature.
Follow with Enter the Infinite, drawing the rest of the deck.
Step 3:
Cast Doubling Season, triggering Dual nature's. Play three more, followed by four Parallel Lives, four Primal Vigor, and finally four Copy Enchantment copying any of these three.
I'll try to re-work out some math later. I missed Dual Nature triggering itself due to Opalescence the first few times.
I do know the 2nd Doubling Season played will result in giving you a total of 4108+2^4108 Doubling Seasons in play.
(at least I think that's how you represent 2 to the 4108th power on forums and stuff)
Step 4:
Mirror Gallery
Step 5:
Followed by Kiki-Jiki.
One at a time tap each Kiki to copy one of the doubling enchantment-creatures before playing your next Kiki.
Repeat through the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Kiki card.
Step 6:
The Furnace of Rath, Boros Reckoner, Ink-Treader Nephilm, Djinn Illuminatus, Earthcraft, Manaflare, Realmwright (naming mountians), Goblin Chieftain, Goblin Chirurgeon, Conspiracy (naiming goblins) and the four Krenko, Mob Boss.
At this point all of your island-mountian will tap for an incredible amount of mana due to the crazy amount manaflare's in play.
The Conspiracy is so Krenko can make more creatures per activation, and marshal to give him haste. Can't forget the Chirurgeon. He's a big player in this too, but his part wait's till the end.
Step 7:
Tap each Krenko, one at a time to increase your creature count.
Using Earthcraft, tap each non-Kiki-Krenko creature to untap your island-mountian for U each time.
Step 8:
Cast Turnabout untapping all creatures, replicating it with all of your mana.
Between each resolution use every Kiki to produce more doubling enchantment-creatures, then every Krenko to produce more goblins, and finally every non-Kiki-Krenko to untap your island-mountian to produce R mana.
Step 9:
Cast Rite of Replication, kicked targeting your Ink-Treader.
Since replicating Rite of Replication won't trigger the Ink-Treader, cast Radiate on Rite, using all of your mana to replicate it.
Between each resolution tap all new Kiki's to copy doubling enchantment-creatures, then all Krenko's to make more goblins.
Repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 9 three more times.
Step 10:
Cast Praetor's Counsel, then repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 10 three more times.
Step 11:
Cast Fireball for zero, then cast Past in Flames.
Step 12:
Repeat steps 5, and 7 to 9 using flashback granted from Past in Flames.
This time however the last untapped Kiki should copy Furnace of Rath.
Step 14:
Tap all non-Kiki-Krenko creatures (all Kiki-Krenko's should already be tapped) for Earthcraft making at least one R mana.
Cast Fireball using flashback and all of your mana, targeting a Reckoner. Sacrifice a goblin from Krenko to Goblin Chirurgeon to regenerate that Reckoner. Target another Reckoner and repeat sacing goblins (tokens first, then creatures that no longer have a use) to keep rengenerating and retargeting to Recokners.
Eventually you can sac almost everything to keep one Reckoner alive, but you will also need at least one furnace or there is no point.
The last Reckoner (card) will target opponent.
I have no idea how the math would look for this (as I get lost around the Kiki's,) but I would very much like to see it if someone figures out the equation.
Step 1:
Mana crypt, Island, Show and Tell, putting Omniscience into play.
Step 2:
Next Opalescence, and Dual Nature.
Follow with Enter the Infinite, drawing the rest of the deck.
Step 3:
Cast Doubling Season, triggering Dual nature's. Play three more, followed by four Parallel Lives, four Primal Vigor, and finally four Copy Enchantment copying any of these three.
I'll try to re-work out some math later. I missed Dual Nature triggering itself due to Opalescence the first few times.
I do know the 2nd Doubling Season played will result in giving you a total of 4108+2^4108 Doubling Seasons in play.
(at least I think that's how you represent 2 to the 4108th power on forums and stuff)
Each time you play a Doubling Season or the equivalent, you get two Dual Nature triggers, the first adding 2^N Doubling Seasons, the next adding 2^2^N Doubling Seasons. 4108 + 2^4108 is between 2^^4 and 2^^5, and then each additional Doubling Season adds two to the right number. So after 16 enchantments you get between 2^^32 and 2^^33 Doubling Seasons.
Step 4:
Mirror Gallery
Step 5:
Followed by Kiki-Jiki.
One at a time tap each Kiki to copy one of the doubling enchantment-creatures before playing your next Kiki.
Repeat through the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Kiki card.
Casting a Kiki-Jiki gets you two Dual Nature triggers again, and the first one gets you more than 2^^33 Kiki-Jikis. Each time you tap a Kiki-Jiki you take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons, so after tapping 2^^33 Kiki-Jikis you will have more than 2^^2^^33 Kiki-Jikis. Then after the second Dual Nature trigger you will have more than 2^^2^^2^^33 Doubling Seasons. After four castings of Kiki-Jiki you will have more than 2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^33 Doubling Seasons, which is between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12 Doubling Seasons.
Step 6:
The Furnace of Rath, Boros Reckoner, Ink-Treader Nephilm, Djinn Illuminatus, Earthcraft, Manaflare, Realmwright (naming mountians), Goblin Chieftain, Goblin Chirurgeon, Conspiracy (naiming goblins) and the four Krenko, Mob Boss.
At this point all of your island-mountian will tap for an incredible amount of mana due to the crazy amount manaflare's in play.
The Conspiracy is so Krenko can make more creatures per activation, and marshal to give him haste. Can't forget the Chirurgeon. He's a big player in this too, but his part wait's till the end.
Step 7:
Tap each Krenko, one at a time to increase your creature count.
Using Earthcraft, tap each non-Kiki-Krenko creature to untap your island-mountian for U each time.
Step 8:
Cast Turnabout untapping all creatures, replicating it with all of your mana.
Between each resolution use every Kiki to produce more doubling enchantment-creatures, then every Krenko to produce more goblins, and finally every non-Kiki-Krenko to untap your island-mountian to produce R mana.
Tapping a Kiki-Jiki will take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons again; if N = 2^^M, then tapping a Kiki-Jiki will take the number to 2^^(M+1). There are more than 2^^^10 Kiki-Jikis, so tapping all of them will take 2^^^11 = 2^^(2^^^10) to 2^^(2^^10 + 2^^10) = 2^^(2 * 2^^10). However, this is unnoticeable compared to 2^^(2^^^11) = 2^^^12, so our number of Doubling Seasons is still between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12. Tapping Krenko, Mob Boss has even less effect; If you have N Doubling Seasons and M Goblins, you will add M * 2^N Goblins, but the number of Doubling Seasons does not get increased. So each tapping of Krenko multiplies by the same 2^N, so you wind up multiplying by 2^N M times to get 2^(MN) times as many Goblins; both M and N are a little more than 2^^^11, so we get 2^(2^^^11 * 2^^^11), which is more than 2^^^11 but still way less than 2^^^12, so again we are stuck between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12.
Step 9:
Cast Rite of Replication, kicked targeting your Ink-Treader.
Since replicating Rite of Replication won't trigger the Ink-Treader, cast Radiate on Rite, using all of your mana to replicate it.
Between each resolution tap all new Kiki's to copy doubling enchantment-creatures, then all Krenko's to make more goblins.
Repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 9 three more times.
Casting Rite of Replication on Ink-Treader targets every creature; so does each Radiate though, and we get more than 2^^^11 copies of Radiate thanks to Replication, so the effect of the Ink-Treader is unnoticeable. Now, if we start with N Doubling Seasons, each copying of a Doubling season takes N to 2^N, so doing that N times takes the number of Doubling Seasons to 2^^N. Then let there be M Kiki-Jikis. The first Kiki-Jiki gets 2^^(N+1) copies, and we can tap each one to take exponentiate the number of Doubling Seasons, so we wind up with 2^^2^^(N+1) Doubling Seasons after all the Kiki-Jikis are tapped. We repeat this M times, so we wind up with about 2^^^M Kiki-Jikis and Doubling Seasons. Then you tap the Krenkos, but again the effect is much smaller and doesn't increase the number of Doubling Seasons or Kiki-Jikis to buttress the next iteration of the combo. This is for one copy of Radiate. We repeat the process 2^^^11 times, each time taking M to 2^^^M, so we wind up with between 2^^^^2^^^11 and 2^^^^2^^^12 Doubling Seasons and Kiki-Jikis.
Repeating this three more times gets us to more than 2^^^^2^^^^2^^^^2^^^^2^^^11 Doubling Seasons, or between 2^^^^^6 and 2^^^^^7 Doubling Seasons.
Step 10:
Cast Praetor's Counsel, then repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 10 three more times.
Each Praetor's Counsel allows us to cast for more Rites and Radiates, so we get a total of 20 Radiates for between 2^^^^^22 and 2^^^^^23 Doubling Seasons.
Step 11:
Cast Fireball for zero, then cast Past in Flames.
Step 12:
Repeat steps 5, and 7 to 9 using flashback granted from Past in Flames.
This time however the last untapped Kiki should copy Furnace of Rath.
Four more Radiates takes us to between 2^^^^^26 and 2^^^^^27 Doubling Seasons.
Step 14:
Tap all non-Kiki-Krenko creatures (all Kiki-Krenko's should already be tapped) for Earthcraft making at least one R mana.
Cast Fireball using flashback and all of your mana, targeting a Reckoner. Sacrifice a goblin from Krenko to Goblin Chirurgeon to regenerate that Reckoner. Target another Reckoner and repeat sacing goblins (tokens first, then creatures that no longer have a use) to keep rengenerating and retargeting to Recokners.
Eventually you can sac almost everything to keep one Reckoner alive, but you will also need at least one furnace or there is no point.
The last Reckoner (card) will target opponent.
Well, fooling around with Boros Reckoner and Furnace of Rath allows us to use N creatures to do 2^N damage, but at this point exponentiating once does so little it's not even funny. So final damage is between 2^^^^^26 and 2^^^^^27 damage.
Possible improvements: You can do a little better early on by increasing the number of Dual Natures; say instead of 1 Dual Nature and 16 Doubling Seasons (or equivalents) you could have 8 Dual Natures and 9 Doubling Seasons. Then it would go
1st Doubling Season
1st Dual Nature: get two copies
2nd Doubling Season: get 2^70 copies
2nd Dual Nature: get 2^2^70 copies
3rd Doubling Season: get 2^^(2^2^70) copies
3rd Dual Nature: get 2^^(2^2^70) copies
4th Doubling Season: get 2^^2^^(2^2^70) copies
and so on, resulting in 2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^(2^2^70) copies of Doubling Season, or more than 2^^^10 copies.
Then, when you cast the first Kiki-Jiki, there will be more than 2^^^9 Dual Natures. The first Dual Nature trigger will produce more than 2^^^10 Kiki-Jikis, each of which can tap to take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons, so we wind up with more than 2^^^11 Doubling Seasons. This happens 2^^^9 times, so wind up with more htan 2^^^2^^^9 Doubling Seasons, and we use the last Kiki-Jiki to copy Dual Nature, getting more than 2^^^2^^^9 Dual Natures for the next Kiki-Jiki. After four Kiki-Jikis we will have more than 2^^^2^^^2^^^2^^^2^^^9 Doubling Seasons and Dual Natures, or between 2^^^^7 and 2^^^^8 Kiki-Jikis.
This is still peanuts compared to the Doubling Seasons/Kiki-Jiki/Rite/Radiate/Replicate combo, so the final damage will only increase to 2^^^^^27 damage. But you can probably see now which pieces are inessential, and change those pieces to ramp up the biggest combo in the deck.
In fact, the deck already effectively has 5 Dual Natures, because Copy Enchantment can copy them for the interleave. Of course, it still has its own copy-nothing interleave possible, and that's useful for a couple different things.
Mana Reflection is a clear upgrade over Mana Flare, since each copy doubles the mana instead of just adding 1. The power of Mana Reflection to add an arrow to the expression isn't realized here, though, because that would require a repeatable mechanism that costs only mana (rather than mana and a card) in order to produce more tokens, and in particular more Mana Reflection tokens--but with Kiki-Jiki and Earthcraft here, it's difficult to imagine how such a mechanism could ever be safe.
For best effect, Praetor's Counsel should be played with full replicate, and given the amount of mana at play here (regardless of the choice of Mana Flare/Reflection), that does add an arrow, and then three more iterations. The final result then looks to be 2^^^^^^6 (2->6->6) rather than 2^^^^^26 (2->26->5). Additionally, once the stack is down to the last Praetor's Counsel, he should sacrifice a bunch of stuff to put regeneration shields on a Boros Reckoner in advance: everything except Boros Reckoner, Dual Nature, and Doubling Season (including the Copy Enchantments that don't share a name with any tokens) is better off being sacrificed so it can be returned and replayed. Too bad he doesn't have a Leyline or Orrery to give things flash, or this could be done in front of every copy of Praetor's Counsel, not just the last. The extra regeneration shields are of course not enough to make a notational difference either way.
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Here's the new list:
1x Show and Tell
1x Omniscience
1x Enter the infinite
1x Opalescence
4x Dual Nature
4x Doubling Season
4x Clever Impersonator
4x Copy Enchantment
1x Xenograft
1x Vernal Equinox
1x Bloodflow Connoisseur
4x Monk Idealist
4x Auramancer
4x Griffin Dreamfinder
1x Battle Hymn
1x Rite of Replication
4x Increasing Vengeance
4x Déjà Vu
4x Call to Mind
4x Mystic Retrieval
1x Mirrorworks
2x Feldon's Cane
4x Cranial Archive
1x Unwilling Recruit
Step 1: Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite.
Step 2: Opalescence, alternate 4x Dual Nature and 4x Doubling Season. 4x Clever Impersonator and 4x Copy Enchantment on nothing, all the tokens alternate Lives and Season. Clever Impersonator dies, that's fine, the token copies are named Dual Nature and Doubling Season so they stay.
Step 3: Precursor Golem, Xenograft naming Golem.
Step 4: Cast Vernal Equinox, then summon Bloodflow Connoisseur. Sacrifice one original Copy Enchantment to Bloodflow. Summon Monk Idealist, respond to each ETB trigger with Copy Enchantment. Repeat for next 3 Monk Idealists, 4 Auramancers and 4 Griffin Dreamfinders.
Step 5: Battle Hymn for a ton of mana, sac one Copy Enchantment, kicked Rite of Replication, 4x Increasing Vengeance on Rite of Replication (save flashback Vengeance for last iteration), respond to each enchantment reanimation trigger with Copy Enchantment and sac.
Step 6: 4x Deja Vu, 4x Mystic Retreival (save flashback) and 4x Call to Mind on Rite of Replication. Then sac all the spent enchantment reanimators, all four Copy Enchantments and Opalescence to Bloodflow.
Step 7: Play Mirrorworks and Alchemist's Apprentice. Sac all the Apprentice tokens to Bloodflow, then cast Feldon's Cane. Sac real Apprentice and respond with Cane, reshuffling then drawing Enter the Infinite putting Lotus on top, recast the Clever Impersonators and Copy Enchantments, then repeat steps 4-6. Repeat step 7 for all the tokens and the other 3 Feldon's Cane in hand.
Step 8: Same as step 7 but with 2x Cranial Archive. Archive draws a card, so you can get one more load of counters on Bloodflow Connoisseur using the real Apprentice. On the very last repetition, flashback Increasing Vengeance and Mystic Retrieval for extra Rite of Replication uses.
Step 9: Use all red mana to cast Unwilling Recruit. Attack with everything. Like in the original, Savage Beating.
Modern: Delver
Legacy: OmniTell
Commander: Too many
Everywhere it works: Storm.
2 Splinter Twin
3 Mana Crypt
4 Rust Tick
5 Archetype of Aggression
6 Gleeful Sabotage
7 Avarax
8 Krosan Groundshaker
9 Lumberknot
10 Black Poplar Shaman
11 Fellhide Brawler
12 Anaba Ancestor
13 Urgent Exorcism
14 Mindshrieker
15 Izzet Guildmage
16 Garza Zol, Plague Queen
17 Baron Sengir
18 Empress Galina
19 Merfolk Sovereign
20 Seahunter
21 Mercenary Informer
22 Boreal Griffin
23 Boeral Druid
24 Ohran Yeti
25 Everglove Courier
27 Ghosthelm Courier
28 Possessed Aven
29 Grassland Crusader
30 Possessed Nomad
31 Shauku's Minion
32 Centaur Archer
33 Maze Glider
34 Paragon of Eternal Wilds
35 Devout Chaplain
36 Royal Assassin
37 Goblin Tunnelers
38 Flamestick Courier
39 Dralnu's Crusade
40 Frightshroud Courier
41 Paragon of Open Graves
42 Karplusan Yeti
43 Chaos Warp
44 Firemind's Foresight
45 Supply // Demand
46 Psychic Trance
47 Night Dealings
48 Repercussion
49 Searing Meditation
50 Horizon Chimera
51 Consecrated Sphinx
52 Words of Wisdom
53 Pain Magnification
54 Five-Alarm Fire
56 Djinn Illuminatus
57 Donate
58 Akroan Horse
59 Mirrorworks
60 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
61 Crown of the Ages
62 Mimic Vat
63 Chrome Mox
64 Mirror Gallery
65 Invoke Prejudice
66 Cowardice
67 Horobi, Death's Wall
68 Psychic Battle
69 Omniscience
70 Leyline of Anticipation
71 Starfield of Nyx
72 Karn, Silver Golem
73 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
74 Mirror of Fate
75 Living Wish
For that sideboard version I see some required card changes:
- Karplusan Yeti has to be replaced because of the lifegain layer; just a formality I guess.
- Emrakul needs to go for Reito Lantern to make the Pain Magnification work; is that cheap enough for the start, or would some other option be necessary?
- Something needs to let the opponent survive the Repercussion layer. At that point Donate should be available so I think anything that lets the opponent not die could replace Akroan Horse.
If my layer count is right this one gets to ... -> 2 -> 15, which is kinda underwhelming when compared to the ... -> 60 -> 4 for the 60 card version. 14 additional cards should pack more oomph.
By the way, is that ... -> 60 -> 4 estimate correct? As far as I can tell we have 59 discards, so to get the 60 we need to make ... -> 1 -> 4 Sangromancers before we let the opponent discard the first time. Before that point we only have +1/+1 counters from Selvala's Enforcer and no other hasty way to target anything above the white mana stage. Obviously that amount is quite limited, especially considering that for the start we need to bounce the enforcer a few times before we can even use the counters. I feel like there should be enough, but the number of targeting abilities needed to get the Ackermann stages going for the first time, and the number of +1/+1 counters available before the first discard should be close enough to need a more accurate count.
I'm still in my mind doing Ackermann explosions with Possibility Storm, but it is a hell of a lot easier than I was making it. All the cards left over from my non-Ackermann list were just interference. It's really very simple to imitate the basic Bloodbond March setup with Possibility Storm. You just need Omniscience, Cowardice, something to target (I'll use Rats of Rath as an example), something to make mana off of discarding (Skirge Familiar), Wheel of Sun and Moon, and a ton of Possibility Storms. Likely use the good old Opalescence/Doubling Season/Dual Nature combination for that. So skipping the set-up and going straight to the Ackermann part:
Cast a creature or enchantment, get a pile of Possibility Storm triggers
First trigger finds nothing, puts the spell you cast into the library
Second trigger casts the spell you cast, puts it into play.
Pay 1 black into Rats of Rath to target it and return it to your hand
[Possibly cast it again to make the skack grow]
Discard the card to make 1 black with Skirge Familiar
Wheel of Sun and Moon puts it back into the deck where the next Possibility Storm trigger finds it
It's really just a direct conversion of the Bloodbond March Ackermann set-up, so nothing groundbreaking about it. And it even comes with a steep downside that Possibility Storm does not discriminate between cards of the same card type, so strings of things that can only target one direction in the chain won't work because Possibility Storm provides an avenue by which one creature can be cast to get more of another regardless of its position in the chain.
BUT! What Possibility Storm does that Bloodbond March doesn't is interact with all the other card types. For example, with a lot of Possibility Storms out and Wheel of Sun and Moon enchanting you, any instant or sorcery can by cast repeatedly proportional to the Possibility Storms. Adding in a simple Dark Ritual to the above scenario will trigger each Possibility Storm, and then every trigger after the first will find Dark Ritual, cast it, and upon resolving it goes back into the library from Wheel of Sun and Moon to be found by the next Possibility Storm. At the end, it's stuck in the library, and any limited method of drawing it back out would let you do it again.
I want to Ackermann that draw. If we could find a limited way to spend a resource redrawing an instant or sorcery and replenish the resource only once for each time we cast it from our hand, we could hit a new high. If, for example, there was a safe way to use Dark Ritual as the instant and redraw it only as many times as we cast it from hand -1, each casting of Dark Ritual would make black mana for each Possibility Storm, effectively transitioning the creature Ackermann to itself, so if the redraw mechanism was something like Yawgmoth's Bargain and limited life gain, there'd be a stack of Ackermann stages equal to the amount of life we started with. And that could be way more than the 25 or so you have right now. We'd have Ackermann'd the Ackermann.
But I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'm pretty confident a way to do it exists, though, especially since artifacts, planeswalkers, and lands are free space. And the creature targeting method is flexible, and any instant or sorcery that makes a resource is an option. The most interesting thing I've found so far is spells with additional costs need to have their additional cost paid, or like an instant with buyback could be used to dig a ritual out of the deck and then be bought back if we could only pay the buyback in a limited way. I've considered things like eggs that redraw themselves but need colored mana to do it, or maybe something silly with Strionic Resonator. I've heavily considered Mind's Desire, as with one Possibility Storm, Wheel of Sun and Moon, and the storm count from getting Omniscience, Leyline of Anticipation, Possibility Storm, and Wheel of Sun and Moon on board in the first place, Mind's Desire could hit itself on each of its storm from hand copies and empty the entire deck without need for any mass draw effect. I even spent a day trying to work Mizzium Transreliquat in as a way to restrict timing by making only the colorless mana plentifully available. But this is where I'm stuck.
Any ideas?
Adding Psychic Battle and recasting the card 100 times would create a stack of alternating psychic battle and possibility storm trigger layers. After running those layers out of all but one trigger you can then go through them: bounce using one trigger, discard for mana, get the card to the battlefield using the next trigger, repeat. This builds up mana depending on how many layers you go through this way. So now what seperates a trigger of the first cast from a trigger of the 74th cast is that the former can have 99 mana floating when it resolves while the latter will only have 26 mana floating.
That distinction works exactly like in the Bloodbond March setup. It might be possible to replace psychic battle with something else as well, but some distinction between the layers is necessary.
------
Now for the more important part: a flexible amount of Ackermann stages. The idea is to have one stage where you have 1 life whenever you work on it, one stage where you have 2 life, ... , one with 24 life and so on, right? (using life as an example)
Transitioning form the 2 life stage to the one life stage is done by spending one life to draw the dark ritual and casting it from hand to get a lot of black mana. After going through the 1 life stage you want to gett back into the 2 life stage, so you use the fact that you cast that dark ritual from hand to replenish one life. You continue on in the 2 life stage until its time to get into the 1 life stage again, at which point you pay that life again.
But what is stopping you from reclaiming the life of that Dark Ritual cast immediately, before going through the 1 life stage? You could do that as often as you want and build up an arbitrary amount of mana. I think in addition to reclaiming the life at the point in the stack where you cast dark ritual from hand you also need to make it a requirement that you clear the mana pool whenever you do so. I'd be surprised if there is a way to do that.
I like the concept of all the stages working to increase the number of Possibility Storm and converting that into the input for the stage only in the transitions. My previous attempts to get a variable amount of stages always had the stage produce the input for the next stage directly. This seems easier to work with. Although thinking about it that also requires some mechanism to ensure that the transition can only be used in the lowest layer of the N life stage, and only a limited amount of times per resolution of that layer. That is because the possibility storms don't actually get converted into mana, but remain on the battlefield. So repeatedly going through the 1 life stage without working on the 2 life stage in between would result in going infinite. Maybe you need to spend a psychic battle trigger as well as a life to draw that dark ritual. But then you need to make sure that the trigger used is really from the 2 life stage and not from the 1 life stage... gaahr
Thinking about repeating Ackermann stages I always get bogged down in mechanics like that until it gets way too complicated to be found in actual cards.
The problem of clearing the mana pool might be too hard, but if you can use tokens as a resource for powering the stage maybe the transition can force a Dual Nature trigger. (That might be just me thinking too close to the current deck instead of being properly creative.)
You're right. A bunch of Psychic Battles and a bunch of Possibility Storms in that setup goes infinite just by using 1 mana to bounce 2 creatures to discard for 2 mana and get them both back, so some adjustment needs to be made. But it's probably a lot easier to keep a million Psychic Battles and just make the targeting ability in such a way that it can only target the one thing we want to bounce up and down.
Drawing from Yawgmoth's Bargain is almost certainly not going to work as the actual thing because life is too fluid a resource, it was just the easiest explanation in my mind for a process that hasn't actually been invented yet. Right now, I really am putting most of my hope into casting a buyback sorcery into Possibility Storm into Mind's Desire to cast a ritual a bunch of times because all the storm copies have to resolve as a batch process before Mind's Desire leaves the stack and is accessible again. And buyback costs actually needing to be paid puts a natural limit on how many times it can be done.
Flash in Protean Hulk
Hulk goes to teh Grave get 4 Disciple of the Vault
Then you go an grab 4 of each
-Shifting Wall
-Phyrexian Marauder
-Hangarback Walker
they all die for being 0 toughness
Deciple's ability triggers, 48 damage
I know Flash is banned in Limited and there is a similar combo in Modern but you can only get 16 damage this way.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
That Disciple of the Vault package is far from optimal for a number of reasons: it never causes any "damage" at all, only life loss; the life loss is in increments of 1 at a time so the game will end abruptly while 28 triggers remain unresolved on the stack; and you've only used 4 of the allotted 6 mana. For instance, you could focus on the 0-mana creatures that do stay alive: 4 each of Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker, Memnite, Dryad Arbor, Crimson Kobolds, Crookshank Kobolds, and Kobolds of Kher Keep (28 creatures--you could also add Shield Sphere but it wouldn't do any good here since it has defender). To go with that, add Hellraiser Goblin (3) and Mirror Entity (3). Tap all four Dryad Arbors for mana since they now have haste, pay for Mirror Entity's ability at X=4, and swing with the 26 untapped 4/4 creatures for 104 damage. And still these two- and three-digits numbers don't get you very far in the grand scheme of things.
Wow that is far better than 48 life loss. i just went with one i knew that was not infinite.
maybe i should build this in Modern, just have to use a different way of getting hulk in from the field to the grave. Flash is not in modern after all.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
With the first trigger, you grab Viscera Seer and Body Double, where Body Double copies Protean Hulk. Sacrifice the Body Double and you get to fetch another set of creatures, this time Mogg Fanatic (or Death Cultist) and Reveillark. Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to its own ability for 1 to the dome, then sacrifice Reveillark to Viscera Seer just to get a trigger. Now you get to reanimate two creature cards with power 2 or less; choose Mogg Fanatic and Body Double, and this time have the Body Double copy Reveillark. From this point, you can keep sacrificing and reanimating both of those creatures forever, or at least until the opponent loses.
Obviously, since this loop can be repeated without limit, it isn't eligible for consideration in the task at hand. But it does go to show the power of recursion: in this case, being able to use Protean Hulk's ability twice means you can get a more potent set of creatures than if you only used it once. Just plonking down a huge swath of creatures and attacking for 100 or so is nowhere near as effective as building a deck around repeating some operation many times. The growth rate of each repetition is also a factor: in the naive 104-damage package I listed, each additional creature only provides a linear contribution of 4 damage. Meanwhile, if Hulk allowed you to fetch 7 mana worth of creatures rather than 6, you would be able to get Hellraiser Goblin (the cheapest fetchable source of haste) alongside Goldnight Commander, which causes each creature to boost the entire army--a quadratic growth rate, such that you could attack for 882, or even more if you decided to add Shield Sphere or the various X-mana creatures that "come into play dead". Even quadratic growth can be made to look puny within the confines of Magic: the most-cited example of a fast-growing mechanism is Precursor Golem + multiple copies of Rite of Replication, although in some cases a two-mana Sundering Growth is capable of exploding even faster than a nine-mana Rite, and there are mechanisms that can get even faster still. You just have to know where to look, and a game with over 15,000 pieces provides an awful lot of possibilities to look through.
1x Show and Tell
1x Omniscience
1x Enter the infinite
1x Opalescence
4x Dual Nature
4x Doubling Season
2x Primal Vigor
4x Copy Enchantment
1x Xenograft
1x Vedalken Orrey
1x Bloodflow Connoiseur
4x Monk Idealist
4x Auramancer
4x Griffin Dreamfinder
1x Battle Hymn
1x Rite of Replication
4x Increasing Vengeance
4x Deja Vu
4x Call to Mind
4x Mystic Retrieval
1x Mirrorworks
4x Feldon's Cane
4x Cranial Archive
What about this version?
Modern: Delver
Legacy: OmniTell
Commander: Too many
Everywhere it works: Storm.
You can have a 63 card deck in constructed.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
But not in this challenge. First sentence of the thread is "A while back, a group of us addressed the following challenge: Create a 60 card, Vintage legal deck that deals the most damage on turn 1 (assuming that you go first), given that no infinite combos are allowed."
Side note: I was really close to an instant/sorcery ackermann, but then I read Soulfire Grand Master again, and realized you can't use it's ability for a spell cast out of Possibility Storm. Buggers!
Glissa Sunseeker + Mana Crypt, with Throne of Bone as our lifegain source? In order to pay for each Throne trigger we need to destroy the crypt using Glissa, and then replay it untapped - but doing so requires that we have 0 mana in our pool.
1 Show and Tell
1 Omniscience
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Doubling Season
1 Opalescence
1 Xenograft
1 Precursor Golem
1 Alchemist's Apprentice
1 Eye of the Storm
1 Seething Song
1 Rite of Replication
1 Insurrection
4 Fork
4 Howl of the Horde
4 Increasing Vengeance
4 Reiterate
4 Reverberate
4 Split Decision
4 Twincast
4 Wild Ricochet
4 Radiate
4 Odds\\Ends
1 Coat of Arms
(Not sure if 60 or not, if not, we can add more useful stuff!)
Here's how it works: Black lotus into a show-and-tell omniscience infinite. Put back Coat of arms back. Play Opalescence, Xenograft (naming golem) and Doubling Season, Then Precursor and Alchemist's apprentice. Cast Eye of the Storm, Seething, and Kick a Rite. Then start hurling the copy spells, starting with Wild Ricochet. Go berserk here, as you will not only copy the Precursor and 3 golem tokens, you copy all the Doubling seasons! With each one producing 6x as many copies as the last, I expect this goes pretty insane. Also note that each time, you copy all previous copy spells, all targeting the kicked Rite. Whoever is counting this, remember that at the end, the Insurrection also triggers all Eye spells. The coat of arms at the end is just an absolute nuke, because you make everything much bigger.
Considering: Curse of Echoes: Your opponent can jump between copy spells all they want, but the rules actually state that if you get to a reset board state, you must do something else instead.
Dont know if this is considered necroposting, but please dont ban me if it is.
Time Walk 1U: Win target game.
Demonic Tutor 1B: Add a time walk to your hand.
Fork effects are not as useful as additional Rites and other variants like Twinflame. With a Fork, all you do is create a single copy of the spell, and that copy was not "cast" so it never picks up any Precursor triggers. A second copy of the token spell does more than all of the Forks put together, with the exception of getting Eye triggers, a purpose for which they can defer to any blank instant or sorcery: 2 Rite + 39 blanks is better than 1 Rite + 40 Forks. 40 token spells, of course, would be better still, if you're just going for a brute force "do one thing over and over, one card at a time" routine.
Kicking the Rite is also not really a big deal--in fact, given that you have at least 3 copies of Doubling Season (which you will), and at least one token copy of everything important produced by some other means, a mere Sundering Growth with its two-mana cost (that you don't actually have to pay, of course) works out to produce more tokens than paying 5 or 9 mana for a Rite. Yes, even though you are destroying all of your artifacts and enchantments, over and over again. The trick is that Populate is a non-targeted instruction that allows you to produce a token of your most valuable permanent, even on the copies that are nominally "targeting" something else. Here, almost all of the populate steps should go after Doubling Season; you only need to make tokens of anything else once each per round of Precursor Golem spell copies, and only just in time to protect their last surviving specimens from being destroyed by making more tokens that will persist into the next round of copies.
Eye of the Storm and Precursor Golem are also not as much of a combo as would be ideal. You only get a number of Precursor triggers equal to the number of Precursors that exist at the moment the spell becomes cast, and eye of the Storm has you casting multiple spells in succession in the middle of the trigger's resolution, where there is no way to amp up the number of tokens in between casts. You can get a more effective way of scaling by doing away with Eye of the Storm entirely, thereby letting your spells go to the graveyard, then using a sequence of spells that can get each other back from the graveyard (but only in one direction). For example, you could use Sundering Growth to make your tokens, then get that back with Reborn Hope, get Reborn Hope back with Revive, and get Revive back with Mystic Retrieval.
In addition, to get any benefit of scaling at all, you'll want some way of dynamically creating copies of those spells. They don't target permanents, so Precursor Golem doesn't contribute anything at this level, but one neat thing you can do is add an animated Pyromancer Ascension, which you will of course be making token copies of, or else Mirror Gallery + Mirari. In the latter case, you need a source for repeatable generation of mana, since it costs 3 mana per copy of the spell. In the former case, you need ways of "powering up" your Ascensions, because they don't do anything without counters on it, but clearly with Doubling Season you only need 1 trigger per copy to leave it with a lot more than 2 counters. There are a couple different ways of doing this: you could play Mystic Speculation once without buyback, then play another copy with buyback, and for 2 mana you can immediately power up every copy of Ascension that currently exists on the board. There are also a few spells that can return to your hand for free, allowing you to avoid mana altogether: Petals of Insight (although this can potentially interfere with your deck setup, allowing you to go infinite if you have a way to put cards back in the library), Molten Birth, View from Above, and potentially even Titan's Revenge for 0 if you can lose the first clash (or get the initial copy of the spell countered for an illegal target) but then win all the rest. A caveat here is that if you do use spells like Reborn Hope, you can't have any cards that are capable of countering them (such as Odds//Ends), or else you can put it in the graveyard in time for a copy of the spell to return its original self, quickly going infinite.
There's clearly some space for having a few nested operations among instants and sorceries, but the trouble is it's rather limited, and leaves you with a ton of superfluous deck space that isn't appreciably helping. Being able to use that deck space on permanents that have more room for granularity than the broad "Sundering Growth, make lots of copies of everything" will just be more powerful.
Time Walk 1U: Win target game.
Demonic Tutor 1B: Add a time walk to your hand.
Actually, is there space for a nivmagus elemental in the current combo? With all those doubling seasons, even exiling a single spell would put on a very large number of counters.
EDIT: Holy wow I haven't been here in ages.
Not really. I'm not entirely sure how many counters exiling a spell would add, but it's not going to do anything compared to adding another Ackermann layer.
I am sad though that my math skills cannot find the proper equation to represent the amount of damage produced.
Also, I apologize for any typo's and general errors in posting this.
Without further delay, my attempt at the most damage on turn 1 in a 60 card Vintage legal list, no sideboard, perfect opening hand.
Creatures: 14
1 Goblin Chieftain
4 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Boros Reckoner
1 Djinn Illuminatus
1 Ink-Treader Nephilim
1 Realmwright
4 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Goblin Chirurgeon
Artifact: 2
1 Mirror Gallery
1 Mana Crypt
Enchantment: 23
1 Conspiracy
1 Furnace of Rath
1 Opalescence
1 Omniscience
4 Copy Enchantment
4 Primal Vigor
4 Doubling Season
4 Parallel Lives
1 Dual Nature
1 Earthcraft
1 Mana Flare
Instant: 8
4 Radiate
4 Turnabout
Sorcery: 12
4 Rite of Replication
4 Praetor's Counsel
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Show and Tell
1 Past in Flames
1 Fireball
Land: 1
1 Island
Step 1:
Mana crypt, Island, Show and Tell, putting Omniscience into play.
Step 2:
Next Opalescence, and Dual Nature.
Follow with Enter the Infinite, drawing the rest of the deck.
Step 3:
Cast Doubling Season, triggering Dual nature's. Play three more, followed by four Parallel Lives, four Primal Vigor, and finally four Copy Enchantment copying any of these three.
I'll try to re-work out some math later. I missed Dual Nature triggering itself due to Opalescence the first few times.
I do know the 2nd Doubling Season played will result in giving you a total of 4108+2^4108 Doubling Seasons in play.
(at least I think that's how you represent 2 to the 4108th power on forums and stuff)
Step 4:
Mirror Gallery
Step 5:
Followed by Kiki-Jiki.
One at a time tap each Kiki to copy one of the doubling enchantment-creatures before playing your next Kiki.
Repeat through the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Kiki card.
Step 6:
The Furnace of Rath, Boros Reckoner, Ink-Treader Nephilm, Djinn Illuminatus, Earthcraft, Manaflare, Realmwright (naming mountians), Goblin Chieftain, Goblin Chirurgeon, Conspiracy (naiming goblins) and the four Krenko, Mob Boss.
At this point all of your island-mountian will tap for an incredible amount of mana due to the crazy amount manaflare's in play.
The Conspiracy is so Krenko can make more creatures per activation, and marshal to give him haste. Can't forget the Chirurgeon. He's a big player in this too, but his part wait's till the end.
Step 7:
Tap each Krenko, one at a time to increase your creature count.
Using Earthcraft, tap each non-Kiki-Krenko creature to untap your island-mountian for U each time.
Step 8:
Cast Turnabout untapping all creatures, replicating it with all of your mana.
Between each resolution use every Kiki to produce more doubling enchantment-creatures, then every Krenko to produce more goblins, and finally every non-Kiki-Krenko to untap your island-mountian to produce R mana.
Step 9:
Cast Rite of Replication, kicked targeting your Ink-Treader.
Since replicating Rite of Replication won't trigger the Ink-Treader, cast Radiate on Rite, using all of your mana to replicate it.
Between each resolution tap all new Kiki's to copy doubling enchantment-creatures, then all Krenko's to make more goblins.
Repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 9 three more times.
Step 10:
Cast Praetor's Counsel, then repeat from Steps 5, and 7 to 10 three more times.
Step 11:
Cast Fireball for zero, then cast Past in Flames.
Step 12:
Repeat steps 5, and 7 to 9 using flashback granted from Past in Flames.
This time however the last untapped Kiki should copy Furnace of Rath.
Step 14:
Tap all non-Kiki-Krenko creatures (all Kiki-Krenko's should already be tapped) for Earthcraft making at least one R mana.
Cast Fireball using flashback and all of your mana, targeting a Reckoner. Sacrifice a goblin from Krenko to Goblin Chirurgeon to regenerate that Reckoner. Target another Reckoner and repeat sacing goblins (tokens first, then creatures that no longer have a use) to keep rengenerating and retargeting to Recokners.
Eventually you can sac almost everything to keep one Reckoner alive, but you will also need at least one furnace or there is no point.
The last Reckoner (card) will target opponent.
I have no idea how the math would look for this (as I get lost around the Kiki's,) but I would very much like to see it if someone figures out the equation.
Each time you play a Doubling Season or the equivalent, you get two Dual Nature triggers, the first adding 2^N Doubling Seasons, the next adding 2^2^N Doubling Seasons. 4108 + 2^4108 is between 2^^4 and 2^^5, and then each additional Doubling Season adds two to the right number. So after 16 enchantments you get between 2^^32 and 2^^33 Doubling Seasons.
Casting a Kiki-Jiki gets you two Dual Nature triggers again, and the first one gets you more than 2^^33 Kiki-Jikis. Each time you tap a Kiki-Jiki you take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons, so after tapping 2^^33 Kiki-Jikis you will have more than 2^^2^^33 Kiki-Jikis. Then after the second Dual Nature trigger you will have more than 2^^2^^2^^33 Doubling Seasons. After four castings of Kiki-Jiki you will have more than 2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^33 Doubling Seasons, which is between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12 Doubling Seasons.
Tapping a Kiki-Jiki will take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons again; if N = 2^^M, then tapping a Kiki-Jiki will take the number to 2^^(M+1). There are more than 2^^^10 Kiki-Jikis, so tapping all of them will take 2^^^11 = 2^^(2^^^10) to 2^^(2^^10 + 2^^10) = 2^^(2 * 2^^10). However, this is unnoticeable compared to 2^^(2^^^11) = 2^^^12, so our number of Doubling Seasons is still between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12. Tapping Krenko, Mob Boss has even less effect; If you have N Doubling Seasons and M Goblins, you will add M * 2^N Goblins, but the number of Doubling Seasons does not get increased. So each tapping of Krenko multiplies by the same 2^N, so you wind up multiplying by 2^N M times to get 2^(MN) times as many Goblins; both M and N are a little more than 2^^^11, so we get 2^(2^^^11 * 2^^^11), which is more than 2^^^11 but still way less than 2^^^12, so again we are stuck between 2^^^11 and 2^^^12.
Casting Rite of Replication on Ink-Treader targets every creature; so does each Radiate though, and we get more than 2^^^11 copies of Radiate thanks to Replication, so the effect of the Ink-Treader is unnoticeable. Now, if we start with N Doubling Seasons, each copying of a Doubling season takes N to 2^N, so doing that N times takes the number of Doubling Seasons to 2^^N. Then let there be M Kiki-Jikis. The first Kiki-Jiki gets 2^^(N+1) copies, and we can tap each one to take exponentiate the number of Doubling Seasons, so we wind up with 2^^2^^(N+1) Doubling Seasons after all the Kiki-Jikis are tapped. We repeat this M times, so we wind up with about 2^^^M Kiki-Jikis and Doubling Seasons. Then you tap the Krenkos, but again the effect is much smaller and doesn't increase the number of Doubling Seasons or Kiki-Jikis to buttress the next iteration of the combo. This is for one copy of Radiate. We repeat the process 2^^^11 times, each time taking M to 2^^^M, so we wind up with between 2^^^^2^^^11 and 2^^^^2^^^12 Doubling Seasons and Kiki-Jikis.
Repeating this three more times gets us to more than 2^^^^2^^^^2^^^^2^^^^2^^^11 Doubling Seasons, or between 2^^^^^6 and 2^^^^^7 Doubling Seasons.
Each Praetor's Counsel allows us to cast for more Rites and Radiates, so we get a total of 20 Radiates for between 2^^^^^22 and 2^^^^^23 Doubling Seasons.
Four more Radiates takes us to between 2^^^^^26 and 2^^^^^27 Doubling Seasons.
Well, fooling around with Boros Reckoner and Furnace of Rath allows us to use N creatures to do 2^N damage, but at this point exponentiating once does so little it's not even funny. So final damage is between 2^^^^^26 and 2^^^^^27 damage.
Possible improvements: You can do a little better early on by increasing the number of Dual Natures; say instead of 1 Dual Nature and 16 Doubling Seasons (or equivalents) you could have 8 Dual Natures and 9 Doubling Seasons. Then it would go
1st Doubling Season
1st Dual Nature: get two copies
2nd Doubling Season: get 2^70 copies
2nd Dual Nature: get 2^2^70 copies
3rd Doubling Season: get 2^^(2^2^70) copies
3rd Dual Nature: get 2^^(2^2^70) copies
4th Doubling Season: get 2^^2^^(2^2^70) copies
and so on, resulting in 2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^2^^(2^2^70) copies of Doubling Season, or more than 2^^^10 copies.
Then, when you cast the first Kiki-Jiki, there will be more than 2^^^9 Dual Natures. The first Dual Nature trigger will produce more than 2^^^10 Kiki-Jikis, each of which can tap to take N Doubling Seasons to 2^N Doubling Seasons, so we wind up with more than 2^^^11 Doubling Seasons. This happens 2^^^9 times, so wind up with more htan 2^^^2^^^9 Doubling Seasons, and we use the last Kiki-Jiki to copy Dual Nature, getting more than 2^^^2^^^9 Dual Natures for the next Kiki-Jiki. After four Kiki-Jikis we will have more than 2^^^2^^^2^^^2^^^2^^^9 Doubling Seasons and Dual Natures, or between 2^^^^7 and 2^^^^8 Kiki-Jikis.
This is still peanuts compared to the Doubling Seasons/Kiki-Jiki/Rite/Radiate/Replicate combo, so the final damage will only increase to 2^^^^^27 damage. But you can probably see now which pieces are inessential, and change those pieces to ramp up the biggest combo in the deck.
Mana Reflection is a clear upgrade over Mana Flare, since each copy doubles the mana instead of just adding 1. The power of Mana Reflection to add an arrow to the expression isn't realized here, though, because that would require a repeatable mechanism that costs only mana (rather than mana and a card) in order to produce more tokens, and in particular more Mana Reflection tokens--but with Kiki-Jiki and Earthcraft here, it's difficult to imagine how such a mechanism could ever be safe.
For best effect, Praetor's Counsel should be played with full replicate, and given the amount of mana at play here (regardless of the choice of Mana Flare/Reflection), that does add an arrow, and then three more iterations. The final result then looks to be 2^^^^^^6 (2->6->6) rather than 2^^^^^26 (2->26->5). Additionally, once the stack is down to the last Praetor's Counsel, he should sacrifice a bunch of stuff to put regeneration shields on a Boros Reckoner in advance: everything except Boros Reckoner, Dual Nature, and Doubling Season (including the Copy Enchantments that don't share a name with any tokens) is better off being sacrificed so it can be returned and replayed. Too bad he doesn't have a Leyline or Orrery to give things flash, or this could be done in front of every copy of Praetor's Counsel, not just the last. The extra regeneration shields are of course not enough to make a notational difference either way.