I realize now that we won't be able to gain a creature with Orvar, since we will still need an instant/sorcery to target enchantments for more Reflections. Normally two triggers in a stage layer is enough provided the other layer can get big, but in this case it looks like we need an octopus to do cast a lot of spells from the graveyard.
But, we still have the opportunity to investigate what we can do now with Orvar instead of Dance of the Manse.
That would slow down the start, but we can certainly look into it! We could cast 10 Ultimatums if we wanted to, and we would still be ahead with an extra layer.
Quandrix Command makes copying creatures almost free, so I see no issue actually.
Edit: Oh, can we get an extra stage with Toralf, God of Fury? We start by dealing X damage to an opponent's creature with 1 toughness. This triggers a bunch of Toralfs to deal X-1 damage to any target. When each of those resolves on another creature with 1 toughness, that will trigger a bunch of Toralfs to deal X-2 damage to any target, and so on. Just add lifelink, and looks like another stage.
We can convert life to blue or cards like normal, and red to that stage via something like heartfire immolator.
we can't use redcap melee (cheap damage) or purphoros, bronze-blooded (indestructible, thus allows the amount of excess damage it takes to stay the same); but they have easy replacements.
I don't think being indestructible affects what is considered excess damage? Normally, excess damage is any damage beyond the amount of toughness, minus the damage that has already been dealt. I'd like to keep Purphoros, if we wind up going with Thaumabroom, and white mana for the remaining layers.
Heartfire Immolator is nice, probably better than Volcanic Geyser, being a creature. We could also stick with Heliod's Intervention, provided we started with something that could only deal damage to the opponent. Even if we did though, trying to get that extra layer with Honor Troll doesn't work, since if have both the ability to give creatures lifelink, and to exchange creatures with the opponent, we can give the opponent lifelinked Toralfs, allowing the opponent to gain life too easily. So it's the same number of layers, and probably not worth the trouble.
With Heartfelt Immolator, a red mana is layer 1, and we get 5 more layers up to Moraug, so 6 layers at the moment.
Hmmm, could we perhaps use an artifact for mana, provided we have no way to sacrifice or bounce the artifact? Then we have no cheap way to reuse it, and we could use Usher to Safety to bounce many times for a white mana.
Oh, but then we can't have Dance of the Manse, since it could animate the artifact, and we can't have both Orvar and treasures, since Usher to Safety can target treasures to make copies. Can we get by with a maximum of 8 Reflections? (4 Reflections and 4 Mirrormades) Then we can just use Thaumabrooms to copy creatures.
Edit: It would probably be more card efficient to use a combination of Reflections and Vadroks. 8 Reflections and 8 Vadroks would give us 72 Vadrok triggers from a single Octopus, which for sure is enough for the stage, and we can probably get by with much less.
Edit: Actually, even more: 2 Reflections and a Vadrok will allow us to mutate Vadrok and get 2 copies, putting 3 Vadrok abilities onto a single creature. Then mutating an octopus will get us 3 mutates, getting us 9 Vadrok triggers. That's probably enough, I would think.
Indestructible allows purphoros to survive with more damage on it than its toughness; so in that case if its dealt, say, 3 damage, then all 3 of it is excess, going infinite. Also it can't really help with thaumabrooms (edit: through its sneak attack ability; it still helps by being an enchantment) anyway since red mana isn't allowed to be cheap. (the back side of Toralf can deal damage for red mana).
Usher to safety can be cast for free with trickery (casting a card for free allows any part/side of that card to be cast for free), and have the original countered with another trickery, so it doesn't work.
I don't believe all damage is excess if a creature survives, and the first oracle ruling suggests that excess damage is indeed the damage that exceeds the toughness; but it's true that this doesn't matter, as we don't need Purphoros.
Is there any way to bounce an artifact at the cost of something other than blue or red?
Hmm, we can actually create a copy of Vadrok, then mutate the original Vadrok onto it, for X+1 Vadrok abilities plus the base one. So 1 Reflections will get us 6 Vadrok triggers per Octopus, 2 Reflections will get us 12.
Unfortunately this standard has pretty awful options for mana rocks, so its cycling or like orb of dragonkind, and cycling does actually ruin the stage.
...
draw island with an Into the Roil copy.
draw cycler with into the roil.
draw octo with into the roil.
play island
mutate octo
sac/reshuffle island
cycle into island
play island
sac/reshuffle island
trickery into Into the Roil
...
Putting in Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded since it helps with the start just a little; I feel pretty confident that damage to indestructible creatures isn't all excess damage.
Since the Purphoros plan doesn't work now with red restricted, I suppose we just stick with the most recent startup plan. Dance of the Manse can be replaced by Arcane Investigator to draw whatever we need to.
Omen of the Hunt isn't really necessary it seems, we can use a Vadrok trigger to cast an enchantment creature from the graveyard. But, we would need to keep that enchantment creature around, so we wouldn't gain an expendable creature that way.
Looks like there are 46 creatures, of which 44 are expendable, so we can deal more than:
Damage to an indestrictible creature *that currently has more damage on it than its toughness* is all excess damage. But, the deck doesn't have any way to give purphoros to the opponent; so it's still safe.
Vadrok doesn't play creatures, so omen is still needed.
I was going to say we also ned a way to bounce it so it can be played in response to sacrifice triggers, but it seems like we can get away with shuffling it and drawing it off of a Farideh trigger.
2 reflections seems like the minimum; we need at least 2 octopus copies to start the stage, and the original doesn't count since it needs to be countered. It seems like it's sufficient, too; we can get as many copies of vadrok in the mutate pile as we need by copying the pile with a broom, bouncing the original, and mutating vadrok again. Each octopus trigger only gets to play each spell once, but I think that's sufficient: we play trickery, roiling, qcom (shuffle island, omen, octo), sometimes the orb/arachnoform; and we can also sometimes dual strike before the qcom to get more shuffles (e.g. to set up for the next trickery), or dual strike last to copy the next spell (such as heliod's).
Finite:
Toralf always decreases the amount of damage it deals by at least one as long as it targets a creature that is not indestructible. (jfb is right on this rule)
stage rebuilding:
a trigger that deals X damage to an opponent's goat creates X triggers that do X-1 damage.
or another way of looking at it
actions:
Spend a life to draw a card -> U stage ->(make more toralfs, and give them more goats)
Use a toralf x>0 trigger to gain x life (most will be x=1, but that just means that the x=2 layer gains lots of life each time)
use a toralf x>1 trigger to make lots of toralf x-1 triggers
Spend a red to make a toralf=X trigger.
Is very nearly the Ackerman function, and terminates.
Okay, it looks like we can just get started without Corridor Monitor. Replaced Wizard's Spellbook with Chandra, Flame's Catalyst just so that we don't have to rely on a roll of 20, but it hardly matters:
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded triggers the Thaumaturges, and we turn them into copies of Sorcerer's Broom (TSBs).
We activate Chandra to cast Genesis Ultimatum.
1 Xorn
1 Vault Robber
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Nyx Herald
1 Woe Strider
We get one constellation trigger from Nyx Herald entering.
Respond by tapping a CoDD for 10 green mana.
Sacrifice the Nyx Herald, 10 mana left.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 4 mana, 4 TSB.
Resolve the constellation trigger, turn 2 TSB into 2 TCoDD
Tap the TCoDD for 11 green mana, 15 total.
Sacrifice the Sorcerer's Broom, 15 mana left.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 9 mana.
Tap the 2nd TCoDD for 12 mana, 21 total.
Sacrifice the CoDD.
Pay to copy 4 TSB, 9 mana, 8 TSB
Sacrifice a TCoDD.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 3 mana, 10 TSB.
Play Nyx Herald, 0 mana.
Resolve the 1st constellation trigger, turn 11 PT's into 2 TSBs, 9 untapped TCoDDs.
Tap a TCoDD for 16 mana.
Sacrifice the Nyx Herald.
Pay to copy 2 TSBs, 10 mana, 4 TSBs total.
Sacrifice tapped TCoDD.
Pay to copy 3 TSBs, 1 mana, 7 TSBs total.
Tap second TCoDD for 19 mana, 20 total.
Pay to copy 1 TSB, 17 mana, 8 TSBs.
Sacrifice tapped TCoDD.
Pay to copy 5 TSBs, 2 mana, 13 TSBs.
Tap 3rd TCoDD for 24 mana, 26 total.
Pay to copy 3 TSBs, 17 mana, 16 TSBs.
Sacrifced 3rd TCoDD.
Pay to copy 5 TSBs, 2 mana, 21 TSBs.
Tap 4th TCoDD for 31 mana, 33 total.
Pay to copy 11 TSBs, 0 mana, 32 TSBs.
Tap 5th TCoDD for 42 mana, 42 total.
Sacrifice 4th TCoDD.
Pay to copy 14 TSBs, 0 mana, 46 TSBs.
Tap 6th TCoDD for 55 mana, 55 total.
Pay to copy 18 TSBs, 1 mana, 64 TSBs.
Tap 7th TCoDD for 73 mana, 74 total.
Sacrifce 5th TCoDD
Pay to copy 24 TsBs, 2 mana, 88 TSB.
Tap 8th TCoDD for 96 mana, 98 total.
Pay to copy 32 TSBs, 2 mana, 120 TSBs.
Tap 9th TCoDD for 128 mana, 130 total.
Sacrifice 6th TCoDD.
Pay to copy 42 TSBs, 4 mana, 162 TSBs.
Finish with 165 PT's. (3 tapped)
Cast the second Nyx Herald, getting another constellation trigger. Turn the 165 TSBs into 3 TSBs, 162 untapped TCoDDs. Each TCoDD gives us roughly 4/3 the mana of the previous one, so 162 more give us around 1.2 * 10^23 mana, allowing us to copy about 4 * 10^22 TSB's, or around 2^75 TSBs. We can then interrupt a sacrifice trigger by playing Omen of the Hunt, allowing us to create more than 2^75 enchantment creatures, taking us to more than 2^^(2^75) TSBs, which we can turn into Xorns and activate Vault Robber to gain more than 2^^(2^75) treasure tokens.
Of course, that doesn't add a creature because Corridor Monitor was already one, but it's nice to see that we can get by without having to throw additional cards at it.
Hmm, I think we don't need to counter Sea-Dasher Octopus. We can mutate Octopus successfully onto a Vadrok, getting a bunch of Vadrok triggers. We can use one to cast Omen of the Hunt, triggering out Protean Thaumaturges. One of them can copy Vadrok, and the legend rule allows us to send the original to the graveyard, putting Sea-Dasher Octopus there where we want it. So one Reflections of Littjara should be enough.
That allows us to go up to 47 creatures, of which 46 are expendable, for 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 47 -> 6) -> 8) -> 8 damage.
Chandra's -2 doesn't cast the spell for free, but the start works just as well with spellbook instead.
I think we do still need 2 reflections; as during the stage we want to be able to mutate the octo while there are still octo copies further down on the stack.
Chandra, Flame's Catalyst doesn't just get to ult that easily, she needs vorinclex. edit: oh you mean the -2, which doesnt work either as jfb pointed out.
But that makes sorcery speed card draw too cheap as quandrix command can bounce her.
I think we can go with a Mirrormade that first copies the spellbook for a second ultimatum, then becomes the second copy of reflections of littjara.
we need to counter the sea dasher octopus to cast it in the next stage layer above the reflections triggers, waiting for it to resolve is too slow. (countering it is easy though thanks to tibalt's trickery)
Oh, I see - the Reflections copies will resolve before original Octopus, so if we wait to resolve the Octopus there won't be any Reflections triggers anymore.
Edit: In case you guys haven't seen it, Iijil has returned, and torpedoed our Vintage deck.
Canyon Jerboa looks unnecessary as we have Quandrix command with a second mode free already, we only get +2/+2 per cast but we do cast it a lot in the U stage.
Other than that, things look solid, Though I do wonder if we need all 4 Gyrudas, and if they should therefore be more enchantment creatures?
Oh we certainly don't need the Gyrudas, I just figured I would use 4 Gyrudas and 4 Glasspool Mimics to get 8 extra creatures at the start, to start at 8 extra mana for Circle of Dreams Druid. Of course, this doesn't effect the final estimate at all, it's just a tiny optimization.
Extra enchantment creatures after that first Vault Robber usage are much smaller comparatively.
Well there's really only room for tiny optimizations here.
Not that we don't have the deck space for it, but we just don't have many resources left to use.
Snow mana is always tempting but has never actually been better than other options.
Black mana is the most glaring omission, but the options to use it are pretty terrible. I guess as long as we're targeting ourselves for the life, Erebos's intervention can get cast more?
Edit: another thought to throw out there is possibly swapping the stages? It doesn't look like it works, but might be worth some thoughts.
I realize now that we won't be able to gain a creature with Orvar, since we will still need an instant/sorcery to target enchantments for more Reflections. Normally two triggers in a stage layer is enough provided the other layer can get big, but in this case it looks like we need an octopus to do cast a lot of spells from the graveyard.
But, we still have the opportunity to investigate what we can do now with Orvar instead of Dance of the Manse.
Quandrix Command makes copying creatures almost free, so I see no issue actually.
Edit: Oh, can we get an extra stage with Toralf, God of Fury? We start by dealing X damage to an opponent's creature with 1 toughness. This triggers a bunch of Toralfs to deal X-1 damage to any target. When each of those resolves on another creature with 1 toughness, that will trigger a bunch of Toralfs to deal X-2 damage to any target, and so on. Just add lifelink, and looks like another stage.
We can convert life to blue or cards like normal, and red to that stage via something like heartfire immolator.
we can't use redcap melee (cheap damage) or purphoros, bronze-blooded (indestructible, thus allows the amount of excess damage it takes to stay the same); but they have easy replacements.
Heartfire Immolator is nice, probably better than Volcanic Geyser, being a creature. We could also stick with Heliod's Intervention, provided we started with something that could only deal damage to the opponent. Even if we did though, trying to get that extra layer with Honor Troll doesn't work, since if have both the ability to give creatures lifelink, and to exchange creatures with the opponent, we can give the opponent lifelinked Toralfs, allowing the opponent to gain life too easily. So it's the same number of layers, and probably not worth the trouble.
With Heartfelt Immolator, a red mana is layer 1, and we get 5 more layers up to Moraug, so 6 layers at the moment.
Hmmm, could we perhaps use an artifact for mana, provided we have no way to sacrifice or bounce the artifact? Then we have no cheap way to reuse it, and we could use Usher to Safety to bounce many times for a white mana.
Oh, but then we can't have Dance of the Manse, since it could animate the artifact, and we can't have both Orvar and treasures, since Usher to Safety can target treasures to make copies. Can we get by with a maximum of 8 Reflections? (4 Reflections and 4 Mirrormades) Then we can just use Thaumabrooms to copy creatures.
Edit: It would probably be more card efficient to use a combination of Reflections and Vadroks. 8 Reflections and 8 Vadroks would give us 72 Vadrok triggers from a single Octopus, which for sure is enough for the stage, and we can probably get by with much less.
Edit: Actually, even more: 2 Reflections and a Vadrok will allow us to mutate Vadrok and get 2 copies, putting 3 Vadrok abilities onto a single creature. Then mutating an octopus will get us 3 mutates, getting us 9 Vadrok triggers. That's probably enough, I would think.
Usher to safety can be cast for free with trickery (casting a card for free allows any part/side of that card to be cast for free), and have the original countered with another trickery, so it doesn't work.
Is there any way to bounce an artifact at the cost of something other than blue or red?
Edit: Urk - Thorough Investigation adds a layer over Planar Ally, but only if we can make copies of enchantments somehow.
If we can't find a way to make enchantment copies without mooting our artifact combo, we'd prefer to keep the artifact layers of course.
Hmm, we can actually create a copy of Vadrok, then mutate the original Vadrok onto it, for X+1 Vadrok abilities plus the base one. So 1 Reflections will get us 6 Vadrok triggers per Octopus, 2 Reflections will get us 12.
...
draw island with an Into the Roil copy.
draw cycler with into the roil.
draw octo with into the roil.
play island
mutate octo
sac/reshuffle island
cycle into island
play island
sac/reshuffle island
trickery into Into the Roil
...
Edit: Updated deck.
1 Akoum Warrior
2 Island
3 Stonecoil Serpent
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Wizard's Spellbook
6 Genesis Ultimatum
7 Genesis Ultimatum
8 Dual Strike
9 Corridor Monitor
10 Vault Robber
Engine/utility:
11 Circle of Dreams Druid
12 Sorcerer's Broom
13 Protean Thaumaturge
14 Scaled Herbalist
15 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
16 Reflections of Littjara
17 Reflections of Littjara
18 Sea Gate Stormcaller
19 Sea-Dasher Octopus
20 Omen of the Hunt
21 Vadrok, Apex of Thunder
22 Arcane Investigator
23 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
24 Rolling Regrowth
25 Quandrix Command
Second Stage:
26 Skemfar Avenger
27 Toralf, God of Fury
28 Heartfire Immolator
29 Duskfang Mentor
30 Clackbridge Troll
Layers:
31 Orb of Dragonkind
32 Arachnoform
33 Heliod's Intervention
34 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
35 Kargan Intimidator
37 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
38 Planar Ally
39 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Expendable Creatures:
1 Woe Strider
4 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
4 Nyx Herald
4 Nyxborn Colossus
8 other creatures
Going with 2 Reflections of Littjara to be safe.
Putting in Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded since it helps with the start just a little; I feel pretty confident that damage to indestructible creatures isn't all excess damage.
Since the Purphoros plan doesn't work now with red restricted, I suppose we just stick with the most recent startup plan. Dance of the Manse can be replaced by Arcane Investigator to draw whatever we need to.
Omen of the Hunt isn't really necessary it seems, we can use a Vadrok trigger to cast an enchantment creature from the graveyard. But, we would need to keep that enchantment creature around, so we wouldn't gain an expendable creature that way.
Looks like there are 46 creatures, of which 44 are expendable, so we can deal more than:
3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 45 -> 6) -> 8) -> 8 damage
Vadrok doesn't play creatures, so omen is still needed.
I was going to say we also ned a way to bounce it so it can be played in response to sacrifice triggers, but it seems like we can get away with shuffling it and drawing it off of a Farideh trigger.
2 reflections seems like the minimum; we need at least 2 octopus copies to start the stage, and the original doesn't count since it needs to be countered. It seems like it's sufficient, too; we can get as many copies of vadrok in the mutate pile as we need by copying the pile with a broom, bouncing the original, and mutating vadrok again. Each octopus trigger only gets to play each spell once, but I think that's sufficient: we play trickery, roiling, qcom (shuffle island, omen, octo), sometimes the orb/arachnoform; and we can also sometimes dual strike before the qcom to get more shuffles (e.g. to set up for the next trickery), or dual strike last to copy the next spell (such as heliod's).
Finite:
Toralf always decreases the amount of damage it deals by at least one as long as it targets a creature that is not indestructible. (jfb is right on this rule)
stage rebuilding:
a trigger that deals X damage to an opponent's goat creates X triggers that do X-1 damage.
or another way of looking at it
actions:
Spend a life to draw a card -> U stage ->(make more toralfs, and give them more goats)
Use a toralf x>0 trigger to gain x life (most will be x=1, but that just means that the x=2 layer gains lots of life each time)
use a toralf x>1 trigger to make lots of toralf x-1 triggers
Spend a red to make a toralf=X trigger.
Is very nearly the Ackerman function, and terminates.
1 Akoum Teeth
2 Island
3 Stonecoil Serpent
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Omen of the Hunt
6 Arcane Investigator
7 Nyx Herald
8 Nyx Herald
Mill:
Genesis Ultimatum
?
Tibalt's Trickery mills the above and fetches Genesis Ultimatum to cast. We exile Genesis Ultimatum and fetch:
1 Chandra, Flame's Catalyst
1 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
1 Sorcerer's Broom
2 Protean Thaumaturge
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded triggers the Thaumaturges, and we turn them into copies of Sorcerer's Broom (TSBs).
We activate Chandra to cast Genesis Ultimatum.
1 Xorn
1 Vault Robber
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Nyx Herald
1 Woe Strider
We get one constellation trigger from Nyx Herald entering.
Respond by tapping a CoDD for 10 green mana.
Sacrifice the Nyx Herald, 10 mana left.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 4 mana, 4 TSB.
Resolve the constellation trigger, turn 2 TSB into 2 TCoDD
Tap the TCoDD for 11 green mana, 15 total.
Sacrifice the Sorcerer's Broom, 15 mana left.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 9 mana.
Tap the 2nd TCoDD for 12 mana, 21 total.
Sacrifice the CoDD.
Pay to copy 4 TSB, 9 mana, 8 TSB
Sacrifice a TCoDD.
Pay to copy 2 TSB, 3 mana, 10 TSB.
Play Nyx Herald, 0 mana.
Resolve the 1st constellation trigger, turn 11 PT's into 2 TSBs, 9 untapped TCoDDs.
Tap a TCoDD for 16 mana.
Sacrifice the Nyx Herald.
Pay to copy 2 TSBs, 10 mana, 4 TSBs total.
Sacrifice tapped TCoDD.
Pay to copy 3 TSBs, 1 mana, 7 TSBs total.
Tap second TCoDD for 19 mana, 20 total.
Pay to copy 1 TSB, 17 mana, 8 TSBs.
Sacrifice tapped TCoDD.
Pay to copy 5 TSBs, 2 mana, 13 TSBs.
Tap 3rd TCoDD for 24 mana, 26 total.
Pay to copy 3 TSBs, 17 mana, 16 TSBs.
Sacrifced 3rd TCoDD.
Pay to copy 5 TSBs, 2 mana, 21 TSBs.
Tap 4th TCoDD for 31 mana, 33 total.
Pay to copy 11 TSBs, 0 mana, 32 TSBs.
Tap 5th TCoDD for 42 mana, 42 total.
Sacrifice 4th TCoDD.
Pay to copy 14 TSBs, 0 mana, 46 TSBs.
Tap 6th TCoDD for 55 mana, 55 total.
Pay to copy 18 TSBs, 1 mana, 64 TSBs.
Tap 7th TCoDD for 73 mana, 74 total.
Sacrifce 5th TCoDD
Pay to copy 24 TsBs, 2 mana, 88 TSB.
Tap 8th TCoDD for 96 mana, 98 total.
Pay to copy 32 TSBs, 2 mana, 120 TSBs.
Tap 9th TCoDD for 128 mana, 130 total.
Sacrifice 6th TCoDD.
Pay to copy 42 TSBs, 4 mana, 162 TSBs.
Finish with 165 PT's. (3 tapped)
Cast the second Nyx Herald, getting another constellation trigger. Turn the 165 TSBs into 3 TSBs, 162 untapped TCoDDs. Each TCoDD gives us roughly 4/3 the mana of the previous one, so 162 more give us around 1.2 * 10^23 mana, allowing us to copy about 4 * 10^22 TSB's, or around 2^75 TSBs. We can then interrupt a sacrifice trigger by playing Omen of the Hunt, allowing us to create more than 2^75 enchantment creatures, taking us to more than 2^^(2^75) TSBs, which we can turn into Xorns and activate Vault Robber to gain more than 2^^(2^75) treasure tokens.
Of course, that doesn't add a creature because Corridor Monitor was already one, but it's nice to see that we can get by without having to throw additional cards at it.
Hmm, I think we don't need to counter Sea-Dasher Octopus. We can mutate Octopus successfully onto a Vadrok, getting a bunch of Vadrok triggers. We can use one to cast Omen of the Hunt, triggering out Protean Thaumaturges. One of them can copy Vadrok, and the legend rule allows us to send the original to the graveyard, putting Sea-Dasher Octopus there where we want it. So one Reflections of Littjara should be enough.
That allows us to go up to 47 creatures, of which 46 are expendable, for 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 47 -> 6) -> 8) -> 8 damage.
I think we do still need 2 reflections; as during the stage we want to be able to mutate the octo while there are still octo copies further down on the stack.
But that makes sorcery speed card draw too cheap as quandrix command can bounce her.
I think we can go with a Mirrormade that first copies the spellbook for a second ultimatum, then becomes the second copy of reflections of littjara.
we need to counter the sea dasher octopus to cast it in the next stage layer above the reflections triggers, waiting for it to resolve is too slow. (countering it is easy though thanks to tibalt's trickery)
Edit: In case you guys haven't seen it, Iijil has returned, and torpedoed our Vintage deck.
Edit: Updated deck:
1 Akoum Warrior
2 Island
3 Stonecoil Serpent
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Wizard's Spellbook
6 Genesis Ultimatum
7 Genesis Ultimatum
8 Dual Strike
9 Vault Robber
Engine/utility:
10 Circle of Dreams Druid
11 Sorcerer's Broom
12 Protean Thaumaturge
13 Scaled Herbalist
14 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
15 Reflections of Littjara
16 Reflections of Littjara
17 Sea Gate Stormcaller
18 Sea-Dasher Octopus
19 Omen of the Hunt
20 Vadrok, Apex of Thunder
21 Arcane Investigator
22 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
23 Rolling Regrowth
24 Quandrix Command
Second Stage:
25 Skemfar Avenger
26 Toralf, God of Fury
27 Heartfire Immolator
28 Duskfang Mentor
29 Clackbridge Troll
30 Canyon Jerboa
Layers:
31 Orb of Dragonkind
32 Arachnoform
33 Heliod's Intervention
35 Kargan Intimidator
36 Xorn
37 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
38 Planar Ally
39 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Expendable Creatures:
1 Woe Strider
4 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
3 Nyx Herald
4 Nyxborn Colossus
9 other creatures
Other than that, things look solid, Though I do wonder if we need all 4 Gyrudas, and if they should therefore be more enchantment creatures?
Oh we certainly don't need the Gyrudas, I just figured I would use 4 Gyrudas and 4 Glasspool Mimics to get 8 extra creatures at the start, to start at 8 extra mana for Circle of Dreams Druid. Of course, this doesn't effect the final estimate at all, it's just a tiny optimization.
Extra enchantment creatures after that first Vault Robber usage are much smaller comparatively.
Not that we don't have the deck space for it, but we just don't have many resources left to use.
Snow mana is always tempting but has never actually been better than other options.
Black mana is the most glaring omission, but the options to use it are pretty terrible. I guess as long as we're targeting ourselves for the life, Erebos's intervention can get cast more?
Edit: another thought to throw out there is possibly swapping the stages? It doesn't look like it works, but might be worth some thoughts.