With the Vintage deck stalling and 75% of the sets released, its about time for a new thread for the standard version of the challenge. And while I am skeptical that we will be able to beat last year’s deck, we do still have an excellent tool in Thousand-Year Storm
So, without further ado, here are the rules, as stated on Stakfish's webpage:
The Rules of the Game
I’ve taken the liberty of adapting the rules from the original vintage challenge to this one. I’ve relaxed them in some places to allow for the limited cardpool, but for the most part I’ve left them as-is.
-Start with a Standard-legal deck of exactly 60 cards. No less, of course, and if we allowed more, you could deal arbitrary but finite damage by including as many copies of Rat Colony as you feel like, and it wouldn’t break the other rules.
-Conditions caused by randomness can resolve any way you like. In this deck, that mostly means that every single card draw is a Demonic Tutor in disguise: you can assume that the order of your deck is exactly what you want it to be. This veers pretty heavily into magical christmasland, but if we didn’t do it this way you’d have to figure out the average amount of damage a deck could deal, which is probably impossible.
-The opponent is a goldfish with a deck of 60 random basic lands. However, they are still playing to stop you: if you give your opponent a choice, they will pick whichever one is worse for you. The only exception is that they won’t concede the game. This is a sadistic goldfish that wants to make you play it out.
-No going infinite. Infinite really means “arbitrary” in magic, most of the time, so we define it like this: when you make your deck, I pick a finite number, say, a million, or Graham’s Number, or four. If, no matter what number I pick, there’s a line your deck can take that will deal at least that much damage, your deck goes infinite and is disqualified.
-This doesn’t matter to our deck, but other rules of magic apply: if I put 80,000,000 copies of Shock on the stack and target my opponent with each one, they’ll die on the tenth one, and I’ll have dealt only 20 damage. In practice, that means you’re either winning with a giant X-spell or by attacking with a lot of very big creatures.
-In the old challenge, you had to go off on turn one. Here, that rule is relaxed, with a caveat: the fewer turns required, the better. No one is impressed that you can deal a lot of damage on turn 50, or 50 million for that matter.
There are a few caveats and corner cases requiring some clarification in those rules:
1.Standard legal means that bans matter. Past Standards have not had any impactful bans for this challenge. Veil of summer is useless for us and while it is unlikely that we would want a card like Oko, or field of the dead, we might wish we could use Once upon a time if at least for an extra free storm.
2.Even though Fae of Wishes could make sideboards relevant, we do not get a sideboard. Notably Karn can wish for artifacts from exile.
3.Since we control randomness and our opponent’s deck is “random” basic lands, we actually get to specify that they are all islands or plains or whatever. This is useful to avoid possibly going infinite if our opponent had, say, a mountain we could somehow steal and go infinite with.
4.The deck must be finite for all lines in the time limit, it doesn’t matter if the deck can go infinite on a later turn, as that turn doesn’t happen.
5.Our opponent will cooperate with any infinites, while opposing us otherwise. Cooperating leads to the deck’s disqualification giving it a terrible score This makes any way to give our opponent any meaningful choices doubly dangerous now.
6.Speaking of scoring, the final score is: -1 * our opponent’s life total at the end of the game. It does not matter how they got there, only the net total matters.
7.Finally, there is some discretion as to whether a slower deck that does more damage is preferred over a faster deck that does much less. In general, this should be obvious, and there hasn’t been much conflict over this point, but if it does come up, we can make a judgement then.
For those who are new to the challenge, here are the writeups of the two past standard decks:
Panharmonicon here– Good explanation of how a ‘stage’ is constructed
Alternating Nova Stage here - has a full example of a stage with the scaling kept constant.
Additionally, there are outdated Vintage writeups here (no proper writeup for the current vintage deck ... yet)
Also recommended is some reading of the large number notation we will probably need to use for this deck. Specifically Conway Arrow Notation, and Chained Arrow Notation.
From there we have a lot of options, a full grip and 19 life we can play with as rainbow mana for the top of our deck.
Then the obvious card to play next would be Thousand-Year Storm.
I do have concerns that gilded goose is too versatile for a deck like this, being able to make any color and gain life seems likely to be an easy way to an infinite. Saruli caretaker is our only other option for a 1 cmc mana dork, and doesn’t work.
Also, because we have Dance of the Manse, we can finally make quasiduplicate copies of enchantments like Thousand Year Storm.
We also want to keep in mind that we have access to flash via emergence zone, and nonlegendary legends like Yarok, the Desecrated and Teysa Karlov thanks to Spark Double.
My initial hope is that there’s a life-based stage combo that works nicely with Bolas’s citadel, but I don’t see anything yet (even without gilded goose’s food).
Anyway, as a quick and un-optimized baseline to get started, after the opening above:
Cast Samut, tyrant smasher – 16 life
Cast Yarok – 11 life
Cast Nexus Warden – 8 life
Cast Nyxbloom Ancient – 2 + 4-> 6 life
Cast Gilded Goosex2 – 4 life 24WWWUUU 2 food
Cast Thirst for Meaning discarding Thousand Year Storm – 1 life 24WWWUUU 2 food 9 cards in hand
Cast Dance of the Manse animating Thousand Year Storm – 5 life 18WWUU 2 food 8 cards in hand 3 storm
Cast Growth Spiral from hand putting Emergence Zone into play and activating it – 5 life 16WWU 2 food 10 cards 4 storm
Cast a whole bunch of instants and sorceries, let’s say we fit enough to get the storm to 30, These can mostly gain us life and mana.
Cast Fooplicate x8 making ~30^9 copies of TYS (quasiduplicate and repudiate // replicate)
Cast the one Clear the Mind and repeat the above for each of the TYS copies getting us to 30^^2
Repeat the above for each of the 7 remaining copies of the self-exiling reshuffling spells (emergency powers and finale x=10)
Swing with haste.
Should be around 30^^^8 damage. (assuming I haven't gotten rusty with the math)
Edit:
Also I found a powerful interaction with Sorcerer's Broom copied by Protean Thaumaturge and any enchantment creature that looks like it goes infinite because of Guilded Goose's food.
The basic combo line is as follows:
Start with a few Thaumabrooms.
Sacrifice a food to trigger them all.
Play Nyxbloom Ancient to get constellation triggers.
They become whatever the optimal ratio of geese and ancients is. (all geese [edit: or nonlegendary yaroks?] for food with some ancients for the triggers?)
Pay for the broom triggers and notably get new geese with sacrificeable food, and at then end get constellation triggers to set most things back to being Thaumabrooms (some to ancients now to make mana).
Now we can sac the excess foods we made to repeatedly double our Thaumabrooms for each food we made. (or until we run out of mana?)
I think this does not actually go infinite because we can't continue to trigger constellation in response to sacrificing a food. Other than by sacrificing another food and triggering constellation in response to that to make an ancient and get a constellation trigger that way. Which still requires a constellation trigger in response to that. Any constellation trigger from a broom trigger can only generate constellation triggers for broom triggers already on the stack, so the number of constellation triggers we have access to is strictly decreasing. Maybe we can make a stage-ish structure based on the number of foods we have?
Obviously, there are several places in the basic line where divergences are possible, but I think this outline works.
Assuming that this works, this allows us to take x flash enchantment etbs to (at least) 2^^x copies of things (and a ton of mana too). [Edit: Disinformation campaign + citywatch sphinx seems like a nice way to get a lot of enchantment etbs assuming we can avoid decking ourselves].
Does anyone see a problem with this strategy?
Edit: As a quick example to put this into action, after the opening:
Cast Yarok - 15 life
Cast Spark double=Yarok - 11 life
Cast Protean Thaumaturge - 9 life
Cast Nexus Warden - 6 life
Cast a cheap enchantment - 8-11 life (just for the life + thaumaturge becomes a Nexus warden)
Cast Nyxbloom ancient - 13-16 life
Cast Samut - 9-12 life
Cast Gilded Goose x2 - 7-10 life 16G9W9U+4F (reread nyxbloom ancient+leyline of abundance interaction as less favorable)
Cast Venture Deeper (Merfolk secretkeeper) milling TYS and The Cauldron of Eternity and Sorcerer's Broom and Dryad of the Ilysain Grove. (might be better options?) 6-9 life
Cast Dance of the Manse, Thaumaturge becomes a broom. ~30 life 4G8W8U+4F
Play Emergence Zone and sac it. Make another thaumabroom. 4G6W6U+4F
Make a few more thaumabrooms
Do the combo line (rough calculations take 8 thaumabrooms to over 2^25 with just 24 seed mana and an enchantment before running low on mana)
Use Resolute Watchdog to make the TYS and other important things indestructable
Make a bunch of TYS
Cast kaya's wrath
Make many Citywatch Sphinx
Each surveil bounces Disinformation campaign, which we can use to iterate the combo again, and have more sphinxes for the next copy of Citywide Bust.
We avoid decking thanks to The Cauldron of Eternity+resolute watchdog.
After all the wraths are done, get it back with Vivid Revival, countering it with aethergust
That Thaumabroom combo looks very interesting! I'll have to look at it more deeply to see if it actually doesn't go infinite, and if there is a possibility for a stage combo out of it. Good stuff!
Edit: Okay, I think I agree that the combo doesn't go infinite, since we can't keep responding with constellation triggers. For the same reason, it doesn't look stagish to me. If the idea is to have alternating groups of food sacrifices and constellation triggers, I don't see how we rebuild the groups of constellation triggers.
Thanks for the confirmation, and yeah it doesn't look likely for there to be a stage in here. The only thing I can think of would be if the way to rebuild the constellation triggers relied on some other resource, but we have tons of life and mana and creatures already, which kind of leaves just our opponent's life? Which seems basically impossible to tie to constellation.
Yeah, the combo uses up a lot of our resources, so there's not much left for the stage resource.
Looking at your current outline, I get:
Layer 1: Each playing of an enchantment can run the main combo, which takes X to more than 10^X.
Layer 2: Each resolution of Kaya's Wrath can destroy a lot of Citywatch Sphinxes, which allows us to bounce Disinformation Campaign many times: X to 10^^X.
Layer 3: Each casting of Kaya's Wrath produces a lot of copies, thanks to all the Thousand-Year Storms: X to 10^^^X.
Layer 4: Each casting of Vivid Revival can fetch Kaya's Wrath many times: X to 10^^^^X.
Layer 5: Each casting of Clear the Mind can fetch Vivid Revival many times: X to 10^^^^^X.
Layer 6: Each casting of one of our exile-to-retrieve cards can fetch Clear the Mind many times: X to 10^^^^^^X.
With 11 exile cards, we wind up with more than 10^^^^^^^12 damage at the end, 7 arrows.
Not bad for a start, and I think the main combo can be further optimized, possibly to x^^x. My basic approach is limited by mana instead of life, and there may be variations that perform better and are limited by life. That way Angel of Vitality could also get us an extra layer.
Edit:
Hmm, with an empty library, 2x Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders lets us convert 3 life into a bunch of artifact only mana which we can run through Prismite to use on the broom triggers.
(obviously a legendary creature that makes normal mana would be preferable)
I think that enables both improvements and takes us to x->12->9 with Angel of Vitality.
edit2: scuttlemutt+thrashing brontodon only takes 2 card slots. and gives us sacrifice triggers (though it wasn't like we were low on those).
Hmm, could you run through those 9 layers? I thought that we were already capable of getting enough mana from for the Broom triggers from Golden Goose and an appropriate number of Nyxbloom Ancients, and that it was neither mana nor life that was the limiter, but responding with constellation triggers.
Oops Thrashing brontodon can give us constellation triggers by killing the Ancient instead of the artifact. Guess its prismite for now.
The constellation trigger gives us our 'in' to the combo, but the combo itself is very mana hungry and but I wasn't able to make full use of it due to my basic line only making mana once.
We can start by spending 1 life and 1 mana sacrificing Resolute watchdog to get a batch of X triggers (Note: Teysa Karlov does not double sacrifice triggers) We can also do this several times before responding with Disinformation campaign to get constellation triggers.
So the stack is:
Constellation triggers
Broom triggers #n
...
Broom triggers #2
Broom triggers #1
Most become geese and Yaroks to maximize our food. Notably the one at the bottom of the batch becomes enchantments.
Pay 3X mana for the broom triggers, getting X^2 food and an enchantment.
So the stack is:
Yarok constellation triggers
Yarok constellation triggers
Yarok constellation triggers
...
final Broom trigger from batch #n
Broom triggers #n-1
...
Broom triggers #2
Broom triggers #1
Let the first batch of constellation triggers resolve, making X angels. Sacrifice a food and gain X life.
Let the second batch of constellation trigger resolve making X Ancients, and a thaumabroom.
Tap Dalakos for 3^X mana, and spend it all making 3^X thaumabrooms.
This requires log(X) life to generate the sacrifice triggers.
When we run low on mana pay 3 life to play the other copy of Dalakos and make more mana
When we run low on life, let the constellation triggers resolve and have everything become Angels, so we can sac a food for X life. (we can also activate one as a goose to get a food if we run low)
As the number of brooms doubles each sac, we start spending more and more mana and life until we run down to just 3 mana left.
Then we let the next broom trigger resolve and make an enchantment, but now we have 3^X brooms that all contribute to the mana/life generation.
We can make 3^(3^X) mana now.
Running the stack down for all the waiting Broom triggers for constellation gets us to 3^^X
Looks like the improvements weren't enough for a second extra layer.
Okay, thanks! Yeah, it seems there is not quite as much mana as we would want.
It looks like we can actually get a lot more food. From the initial Constellation trigger, we can turn the first Thauamabroom that will be copied into a Gilded Goose, and the second into a Nyxbloom Ancient. Then we can do whatever we want with the remaining Thaumabrooms; we will want to make a bunch of them into copies of Yarok, the Desecrated. So the first Broom trigger is resolved, and we get a Gilded Goose, which gives us a lot of Food tokens. We sacrifice the Food tokens one by one, doing that part of the combo and increasing the number of Thaumabrooms. Then, we resolve the second Broom trigger, getting us a Nyxbloom Ancient and triggering Constellation. This will allow us to make the next two Thauamabrooms to be copied into a Gilded Goose and a Nyxbloom Ancient again, and we can make a lot more Yaroks now. So the next Gilded Goose gets exponentially or tetrationally more Food tokens, and it looks like this is worth a layer.
However, I'm not sure how that fits in with the restriction of mana in the combo. I'm thinking the constraint of mana keeps us from gaining another layer, so we are still at x -> 12 -> 8.
Actually, though, it looks like we can get the extra layer without Dalakos or Prismite. So the first Constellation trigger turns the first two Thaumabrooms to be copied into a Gilded Goose and a Nyxbloom Ancient. Besides those, we we can turn the rest into a bunch of Yaroks. So say we have X Yaroks. Then the Gilded Goose comes into play, and we get about X food tokens. Then the Nyxbloom Ancient comes into play, and we get about X Constellation triggers. We can use one Constellation trigger to turn the X Thauamabrooms into X Nyxbloom Ancients, allowing the Gilded Goose to tap for about 3^X mana. (This is more than we need, so we could keep some Thaumabrooms as Brooms) Then we use the next Constellation trigger to turn the Thaumabrooms back into Brooms, and we can use our X food to double the amount of Thaumabrooms X times. So X Brooms go to X * 2^X. We do this a bunch of times for all the initial Broom triggers, so we go from X to 2^^X for the initial response of a Constellation trigger, and we get 8 layers.
What if we add Dalakos and Prismite to the deck? In thise case, instead of the step where we turn all the Thaumabrooms into Nyxbloom Ancients, we can instead turn them all into Angel of Vitality, and gain a bunch of life from a Food token. So we have about X life, and can then use a Constellation trigger to turn the Thaumabrooms into X Nyxbloom Ancients (but leaving at least one a Broom). We spend a fixed amount of life to recast Dalakos, and gain on the order of 3^X mana, enough for roughly 3^X more brooms. We can then use another Constellation trigger to turn almost all of the new Brooms into Nyxbloom Ancients, and repeat the process. After X repetitions we get about 3^^X Brooms. We can repeat this for all of the initial Constellation triggers, so we get about 3^^^X Brooms after all is said and done. This allows us to get to 9 layers.
... We spend a fixed amount of life to recast Dalakos, and gain on the order of 3^X mana, enough for roughly 3^X more brooms. We can then use another Constellation trigger to turn almost all of the new Brooms into Nyxbloom Ancients, and repeat the process. After X repetitions we get about 3^^X Brooms. We can repeat this for all of the initial Constellation triggers, so we get about 3^^^X Brooms after all is said and done.
But the Yarok constellation triggers can only change the X brooms that were already in play, it does not help the new ones.
To convert the new brooms to Nyxbloom Ancients we need to generate a new constellation trigger with the broom trigger further down the stack, past all of the constellation triggers that were already there.
Ah, good point. I think that makes my assessment without Prismite wrong as well, so we do need Prismite to get to 8 layers.
Edit: No, it doesn't look like I require changing any of the new Brooms, so we can get 8 layers without Prismite.
Edit: So, this Thaumabroom combo is pretty good. I'm just not liking how all the mana colors and life get mooted. I think we should keep an eye out for ways to keep mana and life in the picture.
If we kept life around, then for example we could get a double layer from Clear the Mind, by countering it with Ionize. Then we could figure out ways to gain life from there - maybe Repeated Reverberation and some lifegain planeswalkers, for starters.
Mana could also be very productive, thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients. We could get one layer from casting an instant sorcery that uses a particular color with lots of Thousand-Year Storms, and then get another layer from tapping a permanent for lots of mana. So that's potentially two layers per color.
Edit: Okay, unless I am mistaken, I see a way to add two more layers.
Instead of Kaya's Wrath, we will cast Cast Off from Realm-Cloaked Giant, which provides the same function. After all the copies are resolved, we can then cast the Realm Cloaked Giant as a creature. We can then bounce the Realm-Cloaked Giant many times using Usher to Safety from Shepherd of the Flock. We can only bounce one Realm-Cloaked Giant per Thousand-Year Storm trigger, but that is okay, since we will have lots of Thousand-Year Storms. We can then cast Shepherd of the Flock as a creature, and bounce it using Applied Biomancy. Then Applied Biomancy get be retrieved using Vivid Renewal, and the rest of the combo proceeds as normal.
Losing one of the big black artifacts is probably possible, but we do need to be careful about decking, as disinformation campaign does draw a card.
Cast off -> applied biomancy -> Vivid revival looks good though.
The goose is unfortunately the only option for a 1 mana accelerator, which we need to go off on turn 2 with. Theres not even an Ornithopter to pair with Saruli Caretaker. A slower start with something like Leafkin druid might be worth delaying a turn. Llanowar elves is sadly no longer legal.
We can almost cut goose with something like:
turn 1: leylines+mountain+Torch Courier
turn 2: forest+Leafkin druid tap for GGGGG and have 1 card left, or more cards but less G with fewer leylines.
Ah - I was under the impression that Adventures could only be cast from our hand, but perhaps that is wrong.
Bolas's Citadel is very useful, it would be hard to drop that. (We could use Experimental Frenzy, but that does the same thing with regards to Shepherd of the Flock.) I would think The Caldron of Eternity would be easier to get rid of, but I don't see an easy way to deal with Disinformation Campaign. Spells like Repudiate are too expensive, and I don't see a way to put a card from our hand into the library.
Getting started on turn 2 without Gilded Goose also looks hard. How much improvement do we need to consider a delay until turn 3 - would a few layers be enough, or would we want something like a stage combo?
Layer 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it with Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: Resolving a planeswalker lifegain ability gains a lot of life (perhaps with the aid of Angel of Vitality).
Layer 10: Activating a planeswalker lifegain ability gets a lot of copies, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
I had the thought that perhaps we could use Spark Double to create a lot of nonlegendary planeswalkers, and then limit them by requiring them to use an ultimate. Then we could activate them by say playing a land, with a lot of Evolution Sages in play. But, I haven't found a good ultimate to use. Chandra, Fire Artisan or Kaya, Orzhov Usurper could gain life if we had Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, but then we could just use Sorin's first ability.
Or we could use:
Layer 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it with Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: Gaining a life from a lifeland gains us a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality
Layer 10: Playing a lifeland triggers many life gains thanks to Yarok, the Desecrated.
So, two more layers for right now, if we can use life. Probably there is a way to get more.
Adventures are like mini cards, for example, the Lotus-Breach deck in Pioneer escapes Fae of Wishes's Granted from the graveyard to fetch combo cards. (And I did doublecheck with the MTG judgechat.)
I suspect that we can bank on some 0 mana creature being printed in one of the next two sets and using a start with that and saruli caretaker. can be used to play a turn two Bolas's Citadel. Which is probably enough to get started.
I don't want to delay a turn to get 'just' 2 layers, but it's probably worth it.
Experimental Frenzy looks risky, and having to sacrifice it makes things tricky.
As for how to limit lifegains, I remember a similar situation before and a possible solution being to 'lock' the 4 copies of spark double in as a Gideon BlackBlades that we can't remove, and using the +1 to give lifelink to something that does damage. (looks like the army from Widespread brutality is probably too good, maybe Polukranos, unchained? no that doesnt work...)
Changing tactics here, looking for other stageish things, is there maybe a stageish interaction with Clear the Mind+Cerulean drake+Quasiduplicate? The idea being that clear the mind allows us to make more drakes, and the drakes allow us to counter clear the mind, and that both cost 3 mana. But I'm not sure how to generate exactly the required amount each reshuffle.
Okay, I have a better ending life combo. We can use step III of The Akroan War to cause a lot of tapped creatures to deal damage to themselves, which can gain us life in a lot of ways, say with Teysa Karlov. We can trigger step III with Evolution Sages and lands.
So, we have:
Layers 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it using Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: A lifelinked creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, with the aid of Angel of Vitality.
Layer 10: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 11: A couple of proliferates from Evolution Sages can add counters to a lot of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 12: Putting a land into play can trigger a lot of Evolution Sages.
So we can deal more than 10 -> X+1 -> 13 damage, where X is the number of lands that we can put into play.
That Clear the Mind / Cerulean Drake / Quasiduplicate setup looks interesting. But yeah, getting the right amount of mana each time seems difficult. An instant/sorcery that gives us mana, or copying a permanent that gives us mana with Quasiduplicate, will give us too much thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. Perhaps 3 lockets that we can send to the graveyard after use? We would need to put them back into play without using up mana though. Perhaps Bolas's Citadel, with a way to get cheap life, but no way to get cheap mana?
The simplest solution for Emergence Zone is probably just switching it out for Leyline of Anticipation. Or, we could keep Emergence Zone, and use Arboreal Grazer to put additional lands into play, rather than the Dryads. That way we could use Emergence Zone once for the flash, and then recycle it once for the landfall.
What's the problem with Korvold sacrificing Cavalier of Thorns? We don't want to exile the Cavalier. Oh, perhaps it could be a token copy?
Edit: It looks like we can revive that extra Adventure layer, by using Stomp from Bonecrusher Giant rather than Shepherd of the Flock. Four copies of Stomp can destroy Realm-Cloaked Giant, allowing us to recycle it. And this time, we can't use Realm-Cloaked Giant to destroy Bonecrusher Giant, since the latter is a Giant. So I think this works? And takes us to 10 layers with Goose, 14 layers without.
Right, Leyline of anticipation is legal, that fixes the problem in probably the easiest way.
Good find with Bonecrusher Giant being a giant, that also fixes the other problem.
Token copies of cavalier of thorns don't get the death trigger, so we don't actually need to worry about that. But Lotus field is easier control our draws with, so I think it is better anyway.
Starting with 9 blue, the spells in hand and tapped lands we can spend 3 to quasiduplicate a copy of Cerulean drake and the cavalier to find Lotus field to sacrifice all our lands (Yarok helps here).
Then we spend 3 more to Clear the Mind, sacrificing cerulean drake so it reshuffles itself.
The first copies of clear the mind resolves and we redraw quasiduplicate and clear the mind.
Next we spend our last 3 to quasiduplicate the drake+cavalier and get 3 mana and sac our lands.
cast clear the mind and counter it with the drake.
redraw/recycle something as we are out of mana now.
Eventually they run out and we resolve the next quasiduplicates to remake 3 mana to clear the mind again.
This looks very much like a working stage,though I guess the real quasiduplicate is kinda stuck on the stack for some of the time. We can use like Frilled Mystic as a way for it to be able to counter itself?
Hmm, that's looking pretty good. Yeah, Frilled Mystic seems like it should work.
Is it too early to start thinking about how we could add on layers? We would need ways to generate lots of blue mana.
One possibility: Have a creature that can generate blue mana, like Gyre Engineer. Make a lot of copies of it, then cast say a Samut's Sprint to give them all haste? Then we find a way to get lots of red mana - or possibly life, if we cast it using Bolas's Citadel.
Edit: So for example, we could do the following:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm, allowing us to haste a lot of Gyre Engineers. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifegain planeswalker ability can gain a lot of life.
Layer 4: Activating a lifegain planeswalker ability can get a lot of copies, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
So that gets us to X -> X -> N+1 -> 5, where N is however many lifegain planeswalker abilities we can activate. Not a bad start, I guess.
We could get more layers if we used something other than lands for the stage, like perhaps artifacts. But, I didn't see a way to make the switch. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any cards in Standard that put artifacts into play without paying their mana cost.
That's looking nice. TYS really makes stage combos so much easier to find. This combo is nearly grn block legal.
We want to switch to Replicate instead of Quasiduplicate so that both spells cost the same amount of blue, as we will definitely have excess amounts of green.
Edit:
Also, sure we can cast an artifact, we have a boatload of extra green. Maybe via Mystic Forge?
Hmmm... but, we want being able to recycle the artifacts to be based on Replicate, just like with the current combo, so that we can't keep recycling the artifacts after each copy of Clear the Mind. So we need to have to copy some creature to either draw an artifact, or put it into play, or destroy/sacrifice it.
Anyway, I found an improvement with the current setup, so perhaps we don't need to switch. It's going back to proliferate/sagas, but using Martyr for the Cause rather than Evolution Sage:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifelink creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, thanks to Angel of Vitality.
Layer 4: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped lifelink creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 5: Killing a couple of Martyr for the Cause will add lore counters to a bunch of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 6: Activating a creature destroying planeswalker ability can kill a lot of Martyr for the Cause, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
So we get to X -> X -> N+1 -> 7, where N is the number of times we can activate a creature destroying planeswalker ability.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a suitable Planeswalker that could destroy a bunch of creatures with a single ability. The second ability of Chandra, Awakened Inferno seems ideal, but unfortunately, we can use the -X ability to kill off some Martyr for the Cause, while also destroying Chandra, allowing her to be recycled. Chandra, Flame's Fury has an ultimate that looks promising, but it seems pretty easy to arrange for Chandra to have exactly 8 loyalty after some proliferates, so that Chandra will destroy herself with her ultimate. Too bad, it would have been another layer.
Ah nice. I'm not seeing a way to add any layers by using artifacts in the stage combo instead of lands at the moment, but I'll keep it in mind.
I figure the lifelink creatures can be anything that has a tap ability. For example, Gyre Engineer tokens, given lifelink with Teysa Karlov, for example. Fortunately, Martyr for the Cause does not have a tap ability.
Speaking of Teysa Karlov, we can use her to get another layer, since with lots of copies of Teysa, killing off a single Martyr for the Cause will get a lot of proliferate triggers. So that takes us to X -> X -> N+1 -> 8.
Wow, X -> X -> N+1 -> 8 is already getting pretty close to what we got to last time, and we don't even have a full standard yet. Nor have we touched white or black mana. (though those do seem trickier to regulate)
I'm not immediately seeing any other issues.
I seriously did not expect to stumble onto a stage combo so quickly.
Another improvement - we can use Dreadmalkin to sacrifice Planeswalkers at the cost of black mana. We can get a lot of black mana by putting a bunch of Smothering Tithes into play, and making the opponent draw cards. Kenrith, the Returned King seems like a good candidate. The other abilities seem okay - the red mana ability performs the same function as Samut's Sprint, so we could actually use Kenrith in place of Samut's Sprint, I think. The green mana ability seems harmless. White and black mana are very restricted, so those abilities shouldn't be a problem. So the only potential problem is the blue mana ability, if we use it to draw cards for ourselves. I think it should be okay though - an important aspect of Clear the Mind is shuffling the graveyard into the library, so spending four mana to just draw a card seems like an inferior version of that.
So we have:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifelink creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, thanks to Angel of Vitality.
Layer 4: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped lifelink creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 5: Resolving a couple of proliferate triggers will add lore counters to a bunch of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 7: Activating a creature destruction planeswalker ability will destroy many copies of Martyr for the Cause, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
Layer 8: Making the opponent draw a card will gain a lot of black mana thanks to Smothering Tithe, allowing us to destroy and recycle Planeswalkers many times.
Making the opponent draw 53 times will take us to more than 3 -> 3 -> 55 -> 9 damage.
Private Mod Note
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So, without further ado, here are the rules, as stated on Stakfish's webpage:
There are a few caveats and corner cases requiring some clarification in those rules:
1.Standard legal means that bans matter. Past Standards have not had any impactful bans for this challenge. Veil of summer is useless for us and while it is unlikely that we would want a card like Oko, or field of the dead, we might wish we could use Once upon a time if at least for an extra free storm.
2.Even though Fae of Wishes could make sideboards relevant, we do not get a sideboard. Notably Karn can wish for artifacts from exile.
3.Since we control randomness and our opponent’s deck is “random” basic lands, we actually get to specify that they are all islands or plains or whatever. This is useful to avoid possibly going infinite if our opponent had, say, a mountain we could somehow steal and go infinite with.
4.The deck must be finite for all lines in the time limit, it doesn’t matter if the deck can go infinite on a later turn, as that turn doesn’t happen.
5.Our opponent will cooperate with any infinites, while opposing us otherwise. Cooperating leads to the deck’s disqualification giving it a terrible score This makes any way to give our opponent any meaningful choices doubly dangerous now.
6.Speaking of scoring, the final score is: -1 * our opponent’s life total at the end of the game. It does not matter how they got there, only the net total matters.
7.Finally, there is some discretion as to whether a slower deck that does more damage is preferred over a faster deck that does much less. In general, this should be obvious, and there hasn’t been much conflict over this point, but if it does come up, we can make a judgement then.
For those who are new to the challenge, here are the writeups of the two past standard decks:
Panharmonicon here– Good explanation of how a ‘stage’ is constructed
Alternating Nova Stage here - has a full example of a stage with the scaling kept constant.
Additionally, there are outdated Vintage writeups here (no proper writeup for the current vintage deck ... yet)
Also recommended is some reading of the large number notation we will probably need to use for this deck. Specifically Conway Arrow Notation, and Chained Arrow Notation.
Now, to get us kicked off, here’s what is probably the quickest possible setup:
Turn 1: Leyline of Abundance x4, Forest, Gilded goose
Turn 2: Island, Emergency powers, dropping Bolas’s citadel with the addendum.
From there we have a lot of options, a full grip and 19 life we can play with as rainbow mana for the top of our deck.
Then the obvious card to play next would be Thousand-Year Storm.
I do have concerns that gilded goose is too versatile for a deck like this, being able to make any color and gain life seems likely to be an easy way to an infinite. Saruli caretaker is our only other option for a 1 cmc mana dork, and doesn’t work.
Also, because we have Dance of the Manse, we can finally make quasiduplicate copies of enchantments like Thousand Year Storm.
We also want to keep in mind that we have access to flash via emergence zone, and nonlegendary legends like Yarok, the Desecrated and Teysa Karlov thanks to Spark Double.
My initial hope is that there’s a life-based stage combo that works nicely with Bolas’s citadel, but I don’t see anything yet (even without gilded goose’s food).
Anyway, as a quick and un-optimized baseline to get started, after the opening above:
Cast Samut, tyrant smasher – 16 life
Cast Yarok – 11 life
Cast Nexus Warden – 8 life
Cast Nyxbloom Ancient – 2 + 4-> 6 life
Cast Gilded Goosex2 – 4 life 24WWWUUU 2 food
Cast Thirst for Meaning discarding Thousand Year Storm – 1 life 24WWWUUU 2 food 9 cards in hand
Cast Dance of the Manse animating Thousand Year Storm – 5 life 18WWUU 2 food 8 cards in hand 3 storm
Cast Growth Spiral from hand putting Emergence Zone into play and activating it – 5 life 16WWU 2 food 10 cards 4 storm
Cast a whole bunch of instants and sorceries, let’s say we fit enough to get the storm to 30, These can mostly gain us life and mana.
Cast Fooplicate x8 making ~30^9 copies of TYS (quasiduplicate and repudiate // replicate)
Cast the one Clear the Mind and repeat the above for each of the TYS copies getting us to 30^^2
Repeat the above for each of the 7 remaining copies of the self-exiling reshuffling spells (emergency powers and finale x=10)
Swing with haste.
Should be around 30^^^8 damage. (assuming I haven't gotten rusty with the math)
Edit:
Also I found a powerful interaction with Sorcerer's Broom copied by Protean Thaumaturge and any enchantment creature that looks like it goes infinite because of Guilded Goose's food.
The basic combo line is as follows:
Start with a few Thaumabrooms.
Sacrifice a food to trigger them all.
Play Nyxbloom Ancient to get constellation triggers.
They become whatever the optimal ratio of geese and ancients is. (all geese [edit: or nonlegendary yaroks?] for food with some ancients for the triggers?)
Pay for the broom triggers and notably get new geese with sacrificeable food, and at then end get constellation triggers to set most things back to being Thaumabrooms (some to ancients now to make mana).
Now we can sac the excess foods we made to repeatedly double our Thaumabrooms for each food we made. (or until we run out of mana?)
I think this does not actually go infinite because we can't continue to trigger constellation in response to sacrificing a food. Other than by sacrificing another food and triggering constellation in response to that to make an ancient and get a constellation trigger that way. Which still requires a constellation trigger in response to that. Any constellation trigger from a broom trigger can only generate constellation triggers for broom triggers already on the stack, so the number of constellation triggers we have access to is strictly decreasing. Maybe we can make a stage-ish structure based on the number of foods we have?
Obviously, there are several places in the basic line where divergences are possible, but I think this outline works.
Assuming that this works, this allows us to take x flash enchantment etbs to (at least) 2^^x copies of things (and a ton of mana too). [Edit: Disinformation campaign + citywatch sphinx seems like a nice way to get a lot of enchantment etbs assuming we can avoid decking ourselves].
Does anyone see a problem with this strategy?
Edit: As a quick example to put this into action, after the opening:
Cast Yarok - 15 life
Cast Spark double=Yarok - 11 life
Cast Protean Thaumaturge - 9 life
Cast Nexus Warden - 6 life
Cast a cheap enchantment - 8-11 life (just for the life + thaumaturge becomes a Nexus warden)
Cast Nyxbloom ancient - 13-16 life
Cast Samut - 9-12 life
Cast Gilded Goose x2 - 7-10 life 16G9W9U+4F (reread nyxbloom ancient+leyline of abundance interaction as less favorable)
Cast Venture Deeper (Merfolk secretkeeper) milling TYS and The Cauldron of Eternity and Sorcerer's Broom and Dryad of the Ilysain Grove. (might be better options?) 6-9 life
Cast Dance of the Manse, Thaumaturge becomes a broom. ~30 life 4G8W8U+4F
Play Emergence Zone and sac it. Make another thaumabroom. 4G6W6U+4F
Make a few more thaumabrooms
Do the combo line (rough calculations take 8 thaumabrooms to over 2^25 with just 24 seed mana and an enchantment before running low on mana)
Use Resolute Watchdog to make the TYS and other important things indestructable
Make a bunch of TYS
Cast kaya's wrath
Make many Citywatch Sphinx
Each surveil bounces Disinformation campaign, which we can use to iterate the combo again, and have more sphinxes for the next copy of Citywide Bust.
We avoid decking thanks to The Cauldron of Eternity+resolute watchdog.
After all the wraths are done, get it back with Vivid Revival, countering it with aethergust
Then the only copy of Clear the Mind
Then the other copies of Emergency powers, 4xBond of Insight, and 4xFinale of Revelation
Assuming I did that all right, we eventually attack for around x^^^^^^11.
Edit: Okay, I think I agree that the combo doesn't go infinite, since we can't keep responding with constellation triggers. For the same reason, it doesn't look stagish to me. If the idea is to have alternating groups of food sacrifices and constellation triggers, I don't see how we rebuild the groups of constellation triggers.
Looking at your current outline, I get:
Layer 1: Each playing of an enchantment can run the main combo, which takes X to more than 10^X.
Layer 2: Each resolution of Kaya's Wrath can destroy a lot of Citywatch Sphinxes, which allows us to bounce Disinformation Campaign many times: X to 10^^X.
Layer 3: Each casting of Kaya's Wrath produces a lot of copies, thanks to all the Thousand-Year Storms: X to 10^^^X.
Layer 4: Each casting of Vivid Revival can fetch Kaya's Wrath many times: X to 10^^^^X.
Layer 5: Each casting of Clear the Mind can fetch Vivid Revival many times: X to 10^^^^^X.
Layer 6: Each casting of one of our exile-to-retrieve cards can fetch Clear the Mind many times: X to 10^^^^^^X.
With 11 exile cards, we wind up with more than 10^^^^^^^12 damage at the end, 7 arrows.
Edit:
Hmm, with an empty library, 2x Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders lets us convert 3 life into a bunch of artifact only mana which we can run through Prismite to use on the broom triggers.
(obviously a legendary creature that makes normal mana would be preferable)
I think that enables both improvements and takes us to x->12->9 with Angel of Vitality.
edit2:
scuttlemutt+thrashing brontodon only takes 2 card slots. and gives us sacrifice triggers (though it wasn't like we were low on those).
The constellation trigger gives us our 'in' to the combo, but the combo itself is very mana hungry and but I wasn't able to make full use of it due to my basic line only making mana once.
We can start by spending 1 life and 1 mana sacrificing Resolute watchdog to get a batch of X triggers (Note: Teysa Karlov does not double sacrifice triggers) We can also do this several times before responding with Disinformation campaign to get constellation triggers.
So the stack is:
Constellation triggers
Broom triggers #n
...
Broom triggers #2
Broom triggers #1
Most become geese and Yaroks to maximize our food. Notably the one at the bottom of the batch becomes enchantments.
Pay 3X mana for the broom triggers, getting X^2 food and an enchantment.
So the stack is:
Yarok constellation triggers
Yarok constellation triggers
Yarok constellation triggers
...
final Broom trigger from batch #n
Broom triggers #n-1
...
Broom triggers #2
Broom triggers #1
Let the first batch of constellation triggers resolve, making X angels. Sacrifice a food and gain X life.
Let the second batch of constellation trigger resolve making X Ancients, and a thaumabroom.
Tap Dalakos for 3^X mana, and spend it all making 3^X thaumabrooms.
This requires log(X) life to generate the sacrifice triggers.
When we run low on mana pay 3 life to play the other copy of Dalakos and make more mana
When we run low on life, let the constellation triggers resolve and have everything become Angels, so we can sac a food for X life. (we can also activate one as a goose to get a food if we run low)
As the number of brooms doubles each sac, we start spending more and more mana and life until we run down to just 3 mana left.
Then we let the next broom trigger resolve and make an enchantment, but now we have 3^X brooms that all contribute to the mana/life generation.
We can make 3^(3^X) mana now.
Running the stack down for all the waiting Broom triggers for constellation gets us to 3^^X
Looks like the improvements weren't enough for a second extra layer.
Then the later layers take us to x->12->8
It looks like we can actually get a lot more food. From the initial Constellation trigger, we can turn the first Thauamabroom that will be copied into a Gilded Goose, and the second into a Nyxbloom Ancient. Then we can do whatever we want with the remaining Thaumabrooms; we will want to make a bunch of them into copies of Yarok, the Desecrated. So the first Broom trigger is resolved, and we get a Gilded Goose, which gives us a lot of Food tokens. We sacrifice the Food tokens one by one, doing that part of the combo and increasing the number of Thaumabrooms. Then, we resolve the second Broom trigger, getting us a Nyxbloom Ancient and triggering Constellation. This will allow us to make the next two Thauamabrooms to be copied into a Gilded Goose and a Nyxbloom Ancient again, and we can make a lot more Yaroks now. So the next Gilded Goose gets exponentially or tetrationally more Food tokens, and it looks like this is worth a layer.
However, I'm not sure how that fits in with the restriction of mana in the combo. I'm thinking the constraint of mana keeps us from gaining another layer, so we are still at x -> 12 -> 8.
Actually, though, it looks like we can get the extra layer without Dalakos or Prismite. So the first Constellation trigger turns the first two Thaumabrooms to be copied into a Gilded Goose and a Nyxbloom Ancient. Besides those, we we can turn the rest into a bunch of Yaroks. So say we have X Yaroks. Then the Gilded Goose comes into play, and we get about X food tokens. Then the Nyxbloom Ancient comes into play, and we get about X Constellation triggers. We can use one Constellation trigger to turn the X Thauamabrooms into X Nyxbloom Ancients, allowing the Gilded Goose to tap for about 3^X mana. (This is more than we need, so we could keep some Thaumabrooms as Brooms) Then we use the next Constellation trigger to turn the Thaumabrooms back into Brooms, and we can use our X food to double the amount of Thaumabrooms X times. So X Brooms go to X * 2^X. We do this a bunch of times for all the initial Broom triggers, so we go from X to 2^^X for the initial response of a Constellation trigger, and we get 8 layers.
What if we add Dalakos and Prismite to the deck? In thise case, instead of the step where we turn all the Thaumabrooms into Nyxbloom Ancients, we can instead turn them all into Angel of Vitality, and gain a bunch of life from a Food token. So we have about X life, and can then use a Constellation trigger to turn the Thaumabrooms into X Nyxbloom Ancients (but leaving at least one a Broom). We spend a fixed amount of life to recast Dalakos, and gain on the order of 3^X mana, enough for roughly 3^X more brooms. We can then use another Constellation trigger to turn almost all of the new Brooms into Nyxbloom Ancients, and repeat the process. After X repetitions we get about 3^^X Brooms. We can repeat this for all of the initial Constellation triggers, so we get about 3^^^X Brooms after all is said and done. This allows us to get to 9 layers.
So it looks like we do get to X -> 12 -> 9.
But the Yarok constellation triggers can only change the X brooms that were already in play, it does not help the new ones.
To convert the new brooms to Nyxbloom Ancients we need to generate a new constellation trigger with the broom trigger further down the stack, past all of the constellation triggers that were already there.
I think this is not yet to ->9
Edit: No, it doesn't look like I require changing any of the new Brooms, so we can get 8 layers without Prismite.
Edit: So, this Thaumabroom combo is pretty good. I'm just not liking how all the mana colors and life get mooted. I think we should keep an eye out for ways to keep mana and life in the picture.
If we kept life around, then for example we could get a double layer from Clear the Mind, by countering it with Ionize. Then we could figure out ways to gain life from there - maybe Repeated Reverberation and some lifegain planeswalkers, for starters.
Mana could also be very productive, thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients. We could get one layer from casting an instant sorcery that uses a particular color with lots of Thousand-Year Storms, and then get another layer from tapping a permanent for lots of mana. So that's potentially two layers per color.
Edit: Okay, unless I am mistaken, I see a way to add two more layers.
Instead of Kaya's Wrath, we will cast Cast Off from Realm-Cloaked Giant, which provides the same function. After all the copies are resolved, we can then cast the Realm Cloaked Giant as a creature. We can then bounce the Realm-Cloaked Giant many times using Usher to Safety from Shepherd of the Flock. We can only bounce one Realm-Cloaked Giant per Thousand-Year Storm trigger, but that is okay, since we will have lots of Thousand-Year Storms. We can then cast Shepherd of the Flock as a creature, and bounce it using Applied Biomancy. Then Applied Biomancy get be retrieved using Vivid Renewal, and the rest of the combo proceeds as normal.
That should get us to 10 -> 12 -> 10, I believe.
Losing one of the big black artifacts is probably possible, but we do need to be careful about decking, as disinformation campaign does draw a card.
Cast off -> applied biomancy -> Vivid revival looks good though.
The goose is unfortunately the only option for a 1 mana accelerator, which we need to go off on turn 2 with. Theres not even an Ornithopter to pair with Saruli Caretaker. A slower start with something like Leafkin druid might be worth delaying a turn. Llanowar elves is sadly no longer legal.
We can almost cut goose with something like:
turn 1: leylines+mountain+Torch Courier
turn 2: forest+Leafkin druid tap for GGGGG and have 1 card left, or more cards but less G with fewer leylines.
Bolas's Citadel is very useful, it would be hard to drop that. (We could use Experimental Frenzy, but that does the same thing with regards to Shepherd of the Flock.) I would think The Caldron of Eternity would be easier to get rid of, but I don't see an easy way to deal with Disinformation Campaign. Spells like Repudiate are too expensive, and I don't see a way to put a card from our hand into the library.
Getting started on turn 2 without Gilded Goose also looks hard. How much improvement do we need to consider a delay until turn 3 - would a few layers be enough, or would we want something like a stage combo?
If we got rid of the Goose, instead of:
Layer 7: Cast Clear the Mind to retrieve Vivid Revival many times.
Layer 8: Cast Emergency Powers to retrieve Clear the Mind many times.
we could have:
Layer 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it with Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: Resolving a planeswalker lifegain ability gains a lot of life (perhaps with the aid of Angel of Vitality).
Layer 10: Activating a planeswalker lifegain ability gets a lot of copies, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
I had the thought that perhaps we could use Spark Double to create a lot of nonlegendary planeswalkers, and then limit them by requiring them to use an ultimate. Then we could activate them by say playing a land, with a lot of Evolution Sages in play. But, I haven't found a good ultimate to use. Chandra, Fire Artisan or Kaya, Orzhov Usurper could gain life if we had Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, but then we could just use Sorin's first ability.
Or we could use:
Layer 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it with Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: Gaining a life from a lifeland gains us a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality
Layer 10: Playing a lifeland triggers many life gains thanks to Yarok, the Desecrated.
So, two more layers for right now, if we can use life. Probably there is a way to get more.
I suspect that we can bank on some 0 mana creature being printed in one of the next two sets and using a start with that and saruli caretaker. can be used to play a turn two Bolas's Citadel. Which is probably enough to get started.
I don't want to delay a turn to get 'just' 2 layers, but it's probably worth it.
Experimental Frenzy looks risky, and having to sacrifice it makes things tricky.
As for how to limit lifegains, I remember a similar situation before and a possible solution being to 'lock' the 4 copies of spark double in as a Gideon BlackBlades that we can't remove, and using the +1 to give lifelink to something that does damage. (looks like the army from Widespread brutality is probably too good, maybe Polukranos, unchained? no that doesnt work...)
Changing tactics here, looking for other stageish things, is there maybe a stageish interaction with Clear the Mind+Cerulean drake+Quasiduplicate? The idea being that clear the mind allows us to make more drakes, and the drakes allow us to counter clear the mind, and that both cost 3 mana. But I'm not sure how to generate exactly the required amount each reshuffle.
So, we have:
Layers 7-8: Cast Clear the Mind, and counter it using Ionize, at the cost of two life.
Layer 9: A lifelinked creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, with the aid of Angel of Vitality.
Layer 10: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 11: A couple of proliferates from Evolution Sages can add counters to a lot of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 12: Putting a land into play can trigger a lot of Evolution Sages.
So we can deal more than 10 -> X+1 -> 13 damage, where X is the number of lands that we can put into play.
That Clear the Mind / Cerulean Drake / Quasiduplicate setup looks interesting. But yeah, getting the right amount of mana each time seems difficult. An instant/sorcery that gives us mana, or copying a permanent that gives us mana with Quasiduplicate, will give us too much thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. Perhaps 3 lockets that we can send to the graveyard after use? We would need to put them back into play without using up mana though. Perhaps Bolas's Citadel, with a way to get cheap life, but no way to get cheap mana?
As for how to make the mana, lands seem safer, cavalier of thorns plus korvold, fae-cursed king with only 3 lands in the deck?
Edit: there's a problem with korvold saccing the cavalier. Replace Korvold with Lotus field to sac all our lands?
What's the problem with Korvold sacrificing Cavalier of Thorns? We don't want to exile the Cavalier. Oh, perhaps it could be a token copy?
Edit: It looks like we can revive that extra Adventure layer, by using Stomp from Bonecrusher Giant rather than Shepherd of the Flock. Four copies of Stomp can destroy Realm-Cloaked Giant, allowing us to recycle it. And this time, we can't use Realm-Cloaked Giant to destroy Bonecrusher Giant, since the latter is a Giant. So I think this works? And takes us to 10 layers with Goose, 14 layers without.
Good find with Bonecrusher Giant being a giant, that also fixes the other problem.
Token copies of cavalier of thorns don't get the death trigger, so we don't actually need to worry about that. But Lotus field is easier control our draws with, so I think it is better anyway.
Starting with 9 blue, the spells in hand and tapped lands we can spend 3 to quasiduplicate a copy of Cerulean drake and the cavalier to find Lotus field to sacrifice all our lands (Yarok helps here).
Then we spend 3 more to Clear the Mind, sacrificing cerulean drake so it reshuffles itself.
The first copies of clear the mind resolves and we redraw quasiduplicate and clear the mind.
Next we spend our last 3 to quasiduplicate the drake+cavalier and get 3 mana and sac our lands.
cast clear the mind and counter it with the drake.
redraw/recycle something as we are out of mana now.
Eventually they run out and we resolve the next quasiduplicates to remake 3 mana to clear the mind again.
This looks very much like a working stage,though I guess the real quasiduplicate is kinda stuck on the stack for some of the time. We can use like Frilled Mystic as a way for it to be able to counter itself?
Is it too early to start thinking about how we could add on layers? We would need ways to generate lots of blue mana.
One possibility: Have a creature that can generate blue mana, like Gyre Engineer. Make a lot of copies of it, then cast say a Samut's Sprint to give them all haste? Then we find a way to get lots of red mana - or possibly life, if we cast it using Bolas's Citadel.
Edit: So for example, we could do the following:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm, allowing us to haste a lot of Gyre Engineers. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifegain planeswalker ability can gain a lot of life.
Layer 4: Activating a lifegain planeswalker ability can get a lot of copies, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
So that gets us to X -> X -> N+1 -> 5, where N is however many lifegain planeswalker abilities we can activate. Not a bad start, I guess.
I was hoping that I could factor in Crashing Drawbridge to multiply the effect of Samut's Sprint, but it looks like that goes infinite with Quasiduplicate.
We could get more layers if we used something other than lands for the stage, like perhaps artifacts. But, I didn't see a way to make the switch. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any cards in Standard that put artifacts into play without paying their mana cost.
We want to switch to Replicate instead of Quasiduplicate so that both spells cost the same amount of blue, as we will definitely have excess amounts of green.
Edit:
Also, sure we can cast an artifact, we have a boatload of extra green. Maybe via Mystic Forge?
Anyway, I found an improvement with the current setup, so perhaps we don't need to switch. It's going back to proliferate/sagas, but using Martyr for the Cause rather than Evolution Sage:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifelink creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, thanks to Angel of Vitality.
Layer 4: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped lifelink creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 5: Killing a couple of Martyr for the Cause will add lore counters to a bunch of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 6: Activating a creature destroying planeswalker ability can kill a lot of Martyr for the Cause, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
So we get to X -> X -> N+1 -> 7, where N is the number of times we can activate a creature destroying planeswalker ability.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a suitable Planeswalker that could destroy a bunch of creatures with a single ability. The second ability of Chandra, Awakened Inferno seems ideal, but unfortunately, we can use the -X ability to kill off some Martyr for the Cause, while also destroying Chandra, allowing her to be recycled. Chandra, Flame's Fury has an ultimate that looks promising, but it seems pretty easy to arrange for Chandra to have exactly 8 loyalty after some proliferates, so that Chandra will destroy herself with her ultimate. Too bad, it would have been another layer.
How are we tapping the lifelink creatures but not the Martyrs?
I figure the lifelink creatures can be anything that has a tap ability. For example, Gyre Engineer tokens, given lifelink with Teysa Karlov, for example. Fortunately, Martyr for the Cause does not have a tap ability.
Speaking of Teysa Karlov, we can use her to get another layer, since with lots of copies of Teysa, killing off a single Martyr for the Cause will get a lot of proliferate triggers. So that takes us to X -> X -> N+1 -> 8.
Wow, X -> X -> N+1 -> 8 is already getting pretty close to what we got to last time, and we don't even have a full standard yet. Nor have we touched white or black mana. (though those do seem trickier to regulate)
I'm not immediately seeing any other issues.
I seriously did not expect to stumble onto a stage combo so quickly.
So we have:
Layer 1: Casting a Samut's Sprint creates a lot of copies, thanks to Thousand-Year Storm. We can use an Izzet Locket to generate the red mana.
Layer 2: Casting a Disenchant can destroy and recycle a lot of Izzet Lockets. We can spend two life to cast Disenchant.
Layer 3: A lifelink creature dealing damage to itself can gain us a lot of life, thanks to Angel of Vitality.
Layer 4: Triggering step III of The Akroan War will cause a lot of tapped lifelink creatures to deal damage to themselves.
Layer 5: Resolving a couple of proliferate triggers will add lore counters to a bunch of The Akroan Wars.
Layer 6: Destroying a Martyr for the Cause will trigger many proliferates, thanks to Teysa Karlov
Layer 7: Activating a creature destruction planeswalker ability will destroy many copies of Martyr for the Cause, thanks to Repeated Reverberation.
Layer 8: Making the opponent draw a card will gain a lot of black mana thanks to Smothering Tithe, allowing us to destroy and recycle Planeswalkers many times.
Making the opponent draw 53 times will take us to more than 3 -> 3 -> 55 -> 9 damage.