MTG Salvation

Yeah great catch on the orb of dragonkind/Kinnan interaction! I completely missed that, would have been worse than when we misread TYS two years ago.

As for primal might, that seems good, though working around the great henge seems tricky. I think gating all loops through quandrix command -> vadrok trigger -> octo -> blue spend is safe. I don't see any sorcery speed loopholes we can infinite through, even with a cheap creature like sorcerer's broom. Especially since we only get one draw per creature.

Aegar, the freezing flame looks like it almost works for transitioning, but can't actually generate blue because we can't cheaply trigger it between the reflections of littjara octopi.

Birgi would be a pretty good mana engine but Harnfel, Horn of Bounty seems dangerous.

Ardent electromancer seems inefficient, but technically works, once we have a full party (we actually already do: Vault Robber, Duskfang Mentor, Kargan Intimidator, and a bunch of wizards, not to mention arachnoform) and doesn't require haste.

It's still pretty inefficient as needing to etb as an electromancer is more expensive and only profits one mana, slowing us down a lot in the start.

I think that leaves us with palladium myr + kinnan?

Red mana bases (ardent electromancer, birgi) don;t work because the back side of toralf can deal damage for red. But paladium myr should be fine.

Hmm, with the great henge then legendary creatures can always be killed cheaply just by cloning them. Does that go infinite?

I'm liking jfb's idea of using Avalanche Caller to make lots of copies of tapped snow lands using Orvar, the All-Form. This means we can't use Thaumaturges, but it will be worth it to gain a layer.

With Orvar, it doesn't look like we need supplementary mana, except for Sea-Dasher Octopus. We still need that one mana though, so I guess Palladium Myr + Kinnan is as good a choice as any, since they are creatures.


Edit: Hmm, the Legendary Rule does seem problematic. We can target a nontoken legendary creature with Quandrix Command, and then Orvar will trigger prior to resolution, and we can put a copy into play, sending the legendary creature to the graveyard. We can then use a second Reflections trigger to cast Quandrix again, and shuffle the creature and Island into the library. Then a Tibalt's Trickery can cast the creature, and draw the Island.

What might save us is the fact that we only draw one card. So we can't draw Sea-Dasher Octopus. If we try to loop with bouncing the Octopus, we have to use a lot of Quandrix Commands - the Octopus, Scaled Herbalist, and the legendary creature. So can we arrange things so that this is too much? Of course we have to make sure we can do the intended combo fine.


Edit: Oh, bouncing a mutated Octopus also means bouncing the Vadrok that we mutated it onto, so we have to use a Quandrix Command to make another copy of the Vadrox as well. So I'm thinking we can maybe be safe by not allowing for too many Quandrix commands each Octopus mutation.

hmm, that's not exactly true, but since reflections of littjara doesn't let us change the targets, the octopus is still going to end up on a vadrok stack. (instead of say a kinnan or orvar) This is important because remaking a legendary vadrok stack is expensive.

If the octopus is not going on a stack of vadrox (vadrii? vadren?), then we don't get quandrix commands, or other spells.

edit: oh the mutate stack can be nonlegendary, and on a scaled herbalist, hmm that does look problematic.

so we mutate onto the herbalist,
make an orvar copy of it
put island into play
resolve reflections trigger 1
vadrok casts instants
-kill our land
-command kills kinnan, reshuffle island
resolve reflections trigger 2
-command reshuffles kinnan
-trickery casts kinnan (needs a target... Dual strike gives it itself.)
-draw island
resolve orginal octo
-command bounces octo

yeah this seems to go infinite, maybe cutting Dual Strike to make trickery need to counter something lower? Sea Gate stormcaller is also a problem though...

In case removing Dual Strike doesn't help, we can make use of the Kinnan loophole, and use it to make unrestricted green mana from The Ringhart Crest. This should get us 9 layers, compared to the 10 we could potentially get from The Great Henge.


Edit: So, looking at the deck with The Ringhart Crest, I get:



Didn't add the Thaumaturge combo, because it may not be necessary, but it may well be the best way to start anyway. It's also missing how to get started, which may require more Genesis Ultimatums and Wizard's Spellbooks.

Also, here is the deck with The Great Henge, just in case we can use it:

Even if the great henge is safe, which I'm not sure of, how does it help? If we kill all the nontoken creatures with toralf, then can replay them, this only seems to net as much blue mana as we have nontoken creatures, not a full stages worth.

Well, the idea was that we would get a gajillion triggers of Toralf dealing 1 damage, so that we could destroy a gajillion creatures, maybe 2 or 3 at a time. The first issue I think is making sure it doesn't go infinite, then we can see if the same construction can rebuild a stage with Toralf.

Because of retargeting issues, we only get to destroy all of our nontokens every toralf 2 damage trigger, so each one of those profits some blue. Effectively making the toralf stage one layer smaller but that's not a problem.

But sea gate stormcaller has the same problem as dual strike, allowing us to loop a legendary creature for great henge triggers, we even have an extra quandrix command mode to copy stormcaller with right before we cast trickery.

Ringheart crest looks like it works though.

Okay, sounds good. Just gotta figure out the best start again - looking to maximize our number of creatures again.

Multiple stages in the standard card pool! Again! Impressive stuff!

I have finally caught up with this thread and think I understand enough to contribute a bit

As far as I can tell the stages work as intended, so that is great. (I'm looking at the The Ringhart Crest version from post #206)


I did notice one problem in the layers, though: Primal Might cannot be cast at instant speed while paying the mana cost, so we can't spend green on it. Worse, even when cast without paying the mana cost via Tibalt's trickery or Vadrok, Apex of Thunder it still lets two creatures fight. So it gets Toralf, God of Fury triggers without spending green, going infinite.

To keep the rest of the layers as they are we could replace it with Polukranos, Unchained + a way to get cheap black mana (Swamp?). That loses only the one layer from Sea Gate Stormcaller. Are there better options?

Huh I thought primal might was an instant, good catch. and did completely miss the x=0 case for it. Fresh eyes are helpful with this stuff.

That takes out the sea gate stormcaller, and potentially allows the The great henge version ahead again? as trickery would need to actually counter something to cast kinnan. I feel like there might still be a problem in there...

I think The Great Henge goes infinite. We get one extra draw from the Tibalt's Trickery that counters the original Sea-Dasher Octopus if it casts a legendary creature. That is enough:

start with a floating U and Island+Sea-Dasher Octopus+Toralf, God of Fury in the library.
1. spend U to create a bunch of draw triggers
2. draw Island and Octopus
3. put Island into play and tap for U
4. spend U to mutate the Octopus, getting a copy from Reflections of Littjara
5. resolve a mutate copy to get a bunch of Vadrok, Apex of Thunder triggers
6. Use Vadrok triggers to get Island into the library
7. Use Vadrok trigger to counter the original Octopus with Tibalt's Trickery.
8. Cast Toralf of the trickery, have it die to legend rule, draw a card from the Henge trigger: Island
9. put Island into play and tap for U
10. Use Vadrok triggers to get Island, Octopus and Toralf back into the library

We are back where we started with additional draw triggers and progress from spare Vadrok triggers.

So that leaves us with the the ringshart crest deck in #206 (ringheart crest is the back side of an mdfc, but the front side kolvori, god of kinship isn't problematic, and the back side can still be cast at instant speed from trickery as needed), with polukranos+swamp replacing primal might, for 9 layers (1 green -> X damage, 1 crest -> X green, 1 heliod's copy -> X crests (edit: 1 crest), 1 white -> X heliod's, 1 treasure -> X white, 1 room trigger -> X treasures, 4 ventures -> X room triggers, 1 combat -> X ventures, 1 main -> X combats, 2 mains) (or does that count as 8?); the alternative being the deck in #165 minus orb of dragonkind which is the same but 2 layers less.

So it looks like that deck is our best contender so far.

There's also Nylea's intervention + Angelic ascension (to give the opponent a flier) but that doesn't actually seem better than polukranos + swamp (copies from dual strike won't deal more damage); and the latter is one more creature for vault robber.
I also thought about Obosh to increase the damage dealt by each copy of Nylea's intervention, but Vadrok can be mutated onto Toralf to give it an odd cmc which would go infinite.

Unfortunately, I don't see how to get two layers from Heliod's Intervention -> crests. We can get crests either from destroying and recycling the nontoken copy, or through Orvar. For the first, we only can destroy the nontoken crest once per copy, the second we get a lot of copies, but only on the cast.

Nylea's Intervention is also a sorcery, so we can only cast it through Tibalt's Trickery.

Minor optimization, with Orvar, the All-Form we can now copy reflections of littjara via heliod's intervention, (countering it with trickery to not kill the original)

Ah nuts, Orvar, the All-Form + Heliod's Intervention + treasure is no good. So, I guess it's back to Thaumabrooms again.


Edit: I think Volo, Guide to Monsters should be able to replace both copies of Reflections of Littjara, as Sea-Dasher Octopus is the only Octopus, and we have the Warlord if necessary.

Ooh, nice! That gives two more creature slots.
Edit: We'll often have a lot of copies of legendaries for which the octopus is mutated on top, but Kargan intimidator can remove the octopus type from them.

Could Cogwork Archivist or Epitaph Golem replace Quandrix Command to get one more creature? I'm not sure if the other modes are used anywhere, or if putting the cards to the bottom would be a problem.

Hmm; the other modes are used - the +1/+1 counter mode pumps Polukranos, unchained for fights, and the bounce mode is convenient in the opening; so they'd also need replacements. Those cards are also not compatible with openings based on Gyruda, doom of depths and Luminous broodmoth (and possibly just gyruda on its own), without which we'd need extra genesis ultimatums and/or wizard's spellbooks.

hmm, there might actually be something nice there, as gyruda doesn't give us mana as long as the enchantment creatures are all odd? possibly a colorless mana layer?

But a layer above the stages isn't very useful, and changing the start seems unlikely to be profitable in terms of creatures v noncreatures.

Hmm, if we can keep the Gyruda loop devoid of creating any mana, can we put Epitaph Golem in? Might be tricky to get started though.

Sorry, I haven't had much time for this recently, but should have some time over the next few days. With rotation fast approaching, are there any changes we want to get in? Also what start did we end up on?

My bad, I've been a little busy too. I'll take a look at the start very soon.

The only recent thing I was looking at was to maybe fit in Epitaph Golem to add one more creature, by avoiding any loops with Gyruda.


Edit: Question - if I add a nonflash mutate creature in a cheap color (specifically, Regal Leosaur with cheap red), will it go infinite?

It would certainly help to be able to mutate onto Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy in the opening without blue mana, otherwise it is very slow going.

Hmm, I believe it might - mutating leosaur onto vadrok can put the island into the library, then paying a blue draws and plays the island, replaces the blue mana spent on the draw, and as a side effect puts some draw triggers on the stack. They can likely be used for profiting back the mana spent on the leosaur.

Also remember that cheap red doesn't work well with the back side of toralf.

Oh right, no cheap red... okay this is REALLY slow then.