Has anyone run this loop by a judge? I know the loop works and results in a kill. I'm just not sure you can automate it per Comp REL loop rules. You might instead need to perform it manually. This is because per the loop rules, you need to be able to describe the exact gamestate at every point in a loop. We can't do this because every time we loop, we reshuffle our library and then draw cards 7 at a time. We have no idea what 7 cards we will draw and we have no idea what the order of our library will be.
After drawing, we can automate the loop. We can Gut Shot, discard all our cards down to 7, and then resolve the Emrakul trigger. But then when we reshuffle, we have a non-determinate state of our library order and the order that we draw cards. Does this mean we have to manually execute all stages of the combo?
Has anyone run this loop by a judge? I know the loop works and results in a kill. I'm just not sure you can automate it per Comp REL loop rules. You might instead need to perform it manually. This is because per the loop rules, you need to be able to describe the exact gamestate at every point in a loop. We can't do this because every time we loop, we reshuffle our library and then draw cards 7 at a time. We have no idea what 7 cards we will draw and we have no idea what the order of our library will be.
After drawing, we can automate the loop. We can Gut Shot, discard all our cards down to 7, and then resolve the Emrakul trigger. But then when we reshuffle, we have a non-determinate state of our library order and the order that we draw cards. Does this mean we have to manually execute all stages of the combo?
Just to preface I have not asked a judge. Through combing the rules myself just as I have done to make the Four Horseman loop legal (except for the kill), I can't find anything stating otherwise. From what I can tell, as long as your library is divisible by 7 the shortcut will be allowed because you are "drawing your whole library at once" as part of the loop. Even through the contents of your library are random, and each draw has 7 "random" cards, the order of them doesn't matter to the kill since you will always be drawing both Emmy and Gutshot once you draw your whole deck. You could just draw until you have both Emmy and Gutshot in hand, cast Gutshot, then discard to hand size, but that would be non-deterministic meaning you have to play it each time. Having your library divisible by 7 leaves no ambiguity and makes it shortcuttable.
The only grey area I can see is does activating Griselbrand X times constitute as non-deterministic if the final outcome is the same each time. Since the final outcome will always be "I have all of my library in my hand, and I will always cast Gutshot and discard Emmy" then I can't find anything against that.
I have run this deck by other players but not judges, so I'll also ask the few of them who frequent my shops next week to get more opinions.
The only grey area I can see is does activating Griselbrand X times constitute as non-deterministic if the final outcome is the same each time. Since the final outcome will always be "I have all of my library in my hand, and I will always cast Gutshot and discard Emmy" then I can't find anything against that.
Right, so this is my issue. If my library has 42 cards in it, my hand has 7, and the board/exile zone have the remaining 11 cards, I know I can draw my deck with Griselbrand. I can say activate Griselbrand 6 times, draw library, move to cleanup step." Now I begin my loop: "discard to hand size discarding Emrakul, Emrakul triggers, cast/resolve Gut Shot, resolve Emrakul trigger and reshuffle, restart cleanup phase, discard to hand size discarding Emrakul, Emrakul trigger..." etc. etc. This results in infinite Gut Shot casts as long as you have infinite life.
BUT, when you reshuffle, your library is in a non-deterministic game state at the end of each shuffle. AND when you draw your cards, you draw them in non-determinstic batches of 7. So I'm not sure this is loopable. I do not think that the act of shuffling ALONE destroys the loop, because the Gut Shot casting does advance the game state by 1 life point at a time.
BUT, when you reshuffle, your library is in a non-deterministic game state at the end of each shuffle. AND when you draw your cards, you draw them in non-determinstic batches of 7. So I'm not sure this is loopable. I do not think that the act of shuffling ALONE destroys the loop, because the Gut Shot casting does advance the game state by 1 life point at a time.
What I am seeing from my side of the argument is that even though the fact that drawing 7 cards may be non-determinstic because you can't guarantee what cards you are drawing, it doesn't matter since you can always draw 7 enough times to get the two cards that you need into your hand. You can ignore the parts of the combo that are non-deterministic because the sum of those are always known, and there are no restrictions on how many times you can draw cards since you life always just goes down by some multiple of 7. This means that you can always say where you are in the combo assuming the opponent doesn't have a response to disrupt it.
ie every part of the combo is known:
- Start at X life with your deck in your hand
1) Do the Gutshot steps..... cast Gutshot, opponent is at N-1 life, you are at X-2 life, discard to hand size, etc...
2) Always activate Griselbrand Y times where Y is (Number of cards in deck)/7, resulting in you losing Y*7 life, and putting your net life at X-N*(2+Y*7), where N is number of loops done (aka opponents life total)
On each iteration of the loop you then have:
- Opponent at N-1 life
- You at X-N*(2+Y*7) life
- All cards in your deck in your hand moving into step 2 again.
You can demonstrate the loop by drawing your entire deck and showing that there is no way you can't have both Gutshot and Emmy is hand. Then you show the combo by always casting Gut Shot, and always discarding Emmy among the other cards discarded to hand size. At each final state of the combo there is nothing that is random (like Legacy Four Horsemen) that could change the result. You can know the boardstate at every iteration of the combo. For example, say the opponent is at 20 life, you are at 1,000,000 life. You active the loop 20 times, with 42 cards in your deck, then up at 999,120 life with the opponent at 0 (1,000,000-20*(2+6*7)). You can always backtrack and calculate it at any iteration of the loop.
AFAICT this makes it a legit loop that can be preformed at Comp REL. But as I said earlier I will as some judges in person next week. Writing it out like this will make it easier to explain though.
BUT, when you reshuffle, your library is in a non-deterministic game state at the end of each shuffle. AND when you draw your cards, you draw them in non-determinstic batches of 7. So I'm not sure this is loopable. I do not think that the act of shuffling ALONE destroys the loop, because the Gut Shot casting does advance the game state by 1 life point at a time.
What I am seeing from my side of the argument is that even though the fact that drawing 7 cards may be non-determinstic because you can't guarantee what cards you are drawing, it doesn't matter since you can always draw 7 enough times to get the two cards that you need into your hand. You can ignore the parts of the combo that are non-deterministic because the sum of those are always known, and there are no restrictions on how many times you can draw cards since you life always just goes down by some multiple of 7. This means that you can always say where you are in the combo assuming the opponent doesn't have a response to disrupt it.
ie every part of the combo is known:
- Start at X life with your deck in your hand
1) Do the Gutshot steps..... cast Gutshot, opponent is at N-1 life, you are at X-2 life, discard to hand size, etc...
2) Always activate Griselbrand Y times where Y is (Number of cards in deck)/7, resulting in you losing Y*7 life, and putting your net life at X-N*(2+Y*7), where N is number of loops done (aka opponents life total)
On each iteration of the loop you then have:
- Opponent at N-1 life
- You at X-N*(2+Y*7) life
- All cards in your deck in your hand moving into step 2 again.
You can demonstrate the loop by drawing your entire deck and showing that there is no way you can't have both Gutshot and Emmy is hand. Then you show the combo by always casting Gut Shot, and always discarding Emmy among the other cards discarded to hand size. At each final state of the combo there is nothing that is random (like Legacy Four Horsemen) that could change the result. You can know the boardstate at every iteration of the combo. For example, say the opponent is at 20 life, you are at 1,000,000 life. You active the loop 20 times, with 42 cards in your deck, then up at 999,120 life with the opponent at 0 (1,000,000-20*(2+6*7)). You can always backtrack and calculate it at any iteration of the loop.
AFAICT this makes it a legit loop that can be preformed at Comp REL. But as I said earlier I will as some judges in person next week. Writing it out like this will make it easier to explain though.
Yep, totally agree with the description. Just let me/us know if a judge thinks it's okay that we don't know the order we are drawing our cards.
SB:
4 TTB, 1 Quicksilver Amulet, 1 Bligthsteel, 3 Leyline of Sanctity, 2 Defense Grid, 2 Pact of Negation, 1 Temple of Malice, 1 Desperate Ritual
What I learned:
- Pre board is bonkers, post board is dog***** tier.
- TTB SB plan is not great at all, it works somewhat, but you need to pack a lot of interaction into the SB to be able to pull it off. I would play one TTB and 2 Desperate Rituals post board, so that you can go for a Blightsteel/Emrakul TTB win if needed (Leyline of Sanctity turns of Gutshot)
- The "transformal" SB sucks balls, to many dead cards MD to be able to board all of them out. Would instead go into W and/or G for Enchantment/Artefact removal and Pull of Eternity, so that you can get back your exiled cards. However, even this plan just sucks :/ Honestly, I have no idea what we can do here.
- The deck feels clunky sometimes, got better with the inclusion of Temples (cause more "draw spells"). Kinda would want to run 2 Tormenting Voices along the 8 Cnatrips to be able to find/discard the stuff I need.
Conclusio: Since I do not have that much time playing atm (nor will I have in the near future), I will put this deck on "hold" and maybe come back to it later, when it gets more refined. The post board games are the crucial aspect, which needs to get looked at. Also, having close to no time at all developing a deck sucks, but nothing I can do here :/
Greetings,
Kathal
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
The fact is gutshot or soul spike are way more useful out of combo and during combo, plus in situations where your opponent couldnt counter your réanimation spell he Will not be able to counter soul spike or gutshot, but he Will coubter conflagrate.
But actually the kill is not that important anyway, you can even pass turn and kill with a reanimated emmy
So you are telling me the people you play against will allow you to to reanimate gristlebrand and get infinate life and infinate card draw? Effectively allowing you to sculpt the perfect hand since you can just draw your deck and shuffle everything back by pitching Emmy. But they will attempt to counter your conflagerate? Dude! Where do you play? I'm on the way! Free packs is free packs! Joking... (Not really) but speaking of free packs... why not include some number of pact of negation to make sure they can't counter your conflagerate (lolz)?
Then you don't need a judge ruling, putting in cut and pull from eternity, counting cards, etc. Just win.
Talked to a judge last night. The consensus is that you can loop to gain infinite life, and as long as your deck is divisible by 7 you can loop for the reasons I described in post #101. I may post elsewhere online and see if I can get some high-level confirmation like how Toby Elliot ok'd infinite Duskwatch activations.
There was one hiccup where I made the comparison to Four Horsemen for non-deterministic loops, which got him kinda riled up, saying "This sounds a lot like like Four Horsemen, you shouldn't even play it at a tournament. A judge would love to come over and give you slow play" which completely missed the point... Trudging though this, the thought was that the only grey area of the combo, as with most loops, is that if the opponent has any interaction then you have to play out the combo.
From the deck's perspective, the only time an opponent should activate some grave hate is either to stop you from reanimating Gristle, or when Gut Shot/Emmy are in the yard and Emmy's trigger is on the stack so you can exile either piece. They're not going to play somehting when you have drawn 21 cards and still need to draw 21 more, that just doesn't make any sense. If you demonstrate the kill-loop, then I don't see why an opponent can't interject with "I want to activate Relic/cast Surgical/other gravehate etc..." at X point of the loop stop it. That's how any other deck works, so it should work for this one.
So considering Searys was talking about the ability to make infinite mana through pyretic-noxious loops, you could also use infinite mana and convert it infinitely with manamorphose right? In an effort to make the combo a few slots leaner, is it possible that we could use nexus of fate instead of blight steel colossus? This would mean we dont need to run soul spikes or gutshots because we would just loop infinite turns and kill them with our geiers sanctum by milling them every turn while we ourselves cant mill.
On that same note, do we even need to kill them? Most decks except ad nauseum and coco cant beat infinite life and never milling. We can sb cards that actually kill them like gut shot in this matchups, as we already auto win and can pass turn forever.
Also, could reforge the soul lead to earlier kills? It can dump our dredgers whilst also giving us a ton of draws to dredge with to start set up the combo.
Does the transformative sb into grishoalbrand breach not beat gy hate?
So considering Searys was talking about the ability to make infinite mana through pyretic-noxious loops, you could also use infinite mana and convert it infinitely with manamorphose right? In an effort to make the combo a few slots leaner, is it possible that we could use nexus of fate instead of blight steel colossus? This would mean we dont need to run soul spikes or gutshots because we would just loop infinite turns and kill them with our geiers sanctum by milling them every turn while we ourselves cant mill.
On that same note, do we even need to kill them? Most decks except ad nauseum and coco cant beat infinite life and never milling. We can sb cards that actually kill them like gut shot in this matchups, as we already auto win and can pass turn forever.
Also, could reforge the soul lead to earlier kills? It can dump our dredgers whilst also giving us a ton of draws to dredge with to start set up the combo.
Does the transformative sb into grishoalbrand breach not beat gy hate?
Unfortunately yes you do need to actually kill them. Right now Teferi is in quite a few decks. This card allows them to never mill out also. There are also infinate damage combos in the meta (although shrinking) devoted druid combo for instance. I see no problem SB'ing into a win con less deck if not facing one of those decks however. Would be funny to win game one against burn then SB out all win cons and get get life then just keep passing turns until they scoop. Those slots could be used to make it more consistent at comboing rather than fighting a particular plan.
Yeah, except for the coco combo/adnauseum and I guess any elderazi titan/teferi deck, we do need to actually kill them, meaning that we should mainboard the wincon, but sb it out against specific matchups. (Although a well timed surgical on emra could SOMEETIMES win if they have more cards in deck than us during out first attempt to shuffle. It's at least a matchup specific sb approach to, like you said, make the combo more efficient post board vs some matchups.
What did you think about the infinite turns/ Geiers Sanctum approach? It cuts the win con (gut shot etc) slot and still wins the game. It also doesn't seem to fall victim to the problems listed by Kathal below:
"
Pro: Only needs 2 R to actually win the game (which is not a problem realistically)
Con: Relative clunky to execute since you cannot show a loop (like with Gutshot) but you have to execute it through, which might result into mistakes. Also needs a Lightning Axe MD
Regarding Lightning Storm:
Pro: Only one loop to set-up (ditch Phantasmo, set up the Infinite Life combo again and ditch Salvage to Lightning Storm for Infinite damage)
Con: Needs 4 Mana and thus with no land drops it might result into problems (noticed it a couple of times when goldfishing the deck) and needs a MD Lightning Axe
Regarding Gutshot:
Pro: You can set-up a loop to win AND stuff like Angel's Grace cannot do anything against it (since you abuse the Clean-up step for this)
Con: You need your endstep and the Griselbrand in there, which is a problem when you want to reanimate earlier to be able to attack. Also not doable with Footsteps, since Grisel dies at the EoT step.
"
Also Searys, on your last posted decklist you tried in tournament, I don't see any win cons.
If we want even more creatures then stuff like Insolent Neonate and Street Wraith can be added to have even more creatures in the deck that just cycle to the combo while fueling more copies of Secrets of the Mausoleum. Insolent Neonate also has a great interaction with all of the Dredge cards we play so I don't mind getting him in the deck.
SB:
4 Thoughtseize
4 Nature's Claim
1 Ancient Grudge
3 Lightning Axe
1 Sickening Shoal
1 Leyline of the Void
1 The Gitrog Monster
R1: 0-2 vs Bant Spirits (had T2 combo on the play, then got repaired)
R2: 2-0 vs 4c Geist
R3: 2-0 vs Humans
R4: 2-0 vs Tribal Flames Zoo
R5: 2-1 vs Mardu Pyromancer
R6: ID
QF: 0-2 vs Titanshift (best matchup in T8, so this stung a bit)
Noose Constrictors were intended as solid blockers vs aggro (especially Spirits), discard outlets that let you kill the same turn without resorting to Emrakul loops that mess up your dredge, and threats that can sometimes win games vs RIP/Leyline. They were fine at all of that but I'm not convinced the deck wants them.
The basic shell felt very strong; after years of messing around with various Griselbrand decks, the Brownscale synergy was a breath of fresh air. This deck gains more than almost any other from Guilds between Secrets of the Mausoleum and Assassin's Trophy, so I'm excited to explore it further!
I'm curious about Creeping Chill. People thought it might be good in dredge as reach.. but I don't see it being overly useful as they have Conflagrate for that. Why I think it could be different in this deck comes in 3 reasons:
1) We only care about our life total, and having more of it is beneficial as we can potentially activate Griselbrand again when we are trying to dredge our library into the graveyard.
2) The possibly more important clause is that the text of the card reads "When Creeping Chill is put into your graveyard from your library, you may exile it. If you do, Creeping Chill deals 3 damage to each opponent and you gain 3 life." It's the may ability which is relevant here as it allows us to permanently remove a card from our deck. If we need a deck which is divisible by 7 in order to do the Gut Shot kill, so having cards which can be exiled to reduce our deck size is key here. Simian Spirit Guide is another card that allows us to do that, making 8 cards in the deck which can modify its size. In a typical game there will be ~3-5 permanents in play, meaning your deck will have at most ~50-48 cards in it. We need to get to 42 cards at this point, so having 8 exile effects comfortably gets us there. Even playing 4 SSG and 2 CC should be able to get us at 42 cards in the deck with anywhere from 2 Lands + GristleB in play to 5 Lands + GristleB in play.
3) You can surprise kill with dredging 4 Creeping Chill (12 damage) + a hasty Griselbrand (19 damage), and assuming they cracked a fetch/took a shock they will be dead.
So what I'm wondering is, is it worth it to play essentially a "dead draw" that doesn't have Dredge, with the upside of potentially smoothing the combo for both combat step and making a consistent infinite combo with Gut Shot.
Actually we don't need any self exiling cards to make our deck a 7 multiple, we just have to adjust the number of cards using the phantasmagorians.
Just imagine we are comboing with the emrakul trigger on the stack, we have at this moment 29 cards in our library+grave and obviously a phantasmagorian in hand, and another in the grave. we can adjust by discarding 2 cards by 2 cards (if we discard gorian in hand and allow the other to get back in hand.
Well about it i'm 99% sure that i can attain a 7 multiple with only the 2 phantasmagorians with any library/grave state, prove me wrong
Unless I'm understanding the Gut Shot kill wrong I believe you need 7 to discard to hand size in order to make it a deterministic loop in order to get around slow play rules.
In the end step after having infinite life allowing for infinite Griselbrand activations:
1) Activate Griselbrand X times to draw you deck (which is divisible by 7). You whole deck is now in your hand
2) Discard down to a any 7 card hand that includes Gut Shot still in it. Your graveyard now has your deck -7 cards in it.
3) Emmy triggers, giving you priority to cast Gut Shot. Do that, and your graveyard now has your deck -6 cards in it.
4) The Emmy trigger resolves and shuffles your graveyard back into your deck. This creates a new cleanup step and priority for both players, allowing you to start steps 1-4 over again.
The number of cards shuffled back in during stop 4 must be divisible by 7 in order to repeat steps 1-4 "infinite" times since it's a requirement for stop 1. You can't have more than 6 cards in your hand since you have to discard down to 7 cards in the cleanup step, and then you still need to cast Gut Shot.
This does mean my numbers were kindof wrong, since you need a 56/49/42/35 card "deck", but 6 of those will be perma stuck in your hand. So looking at it again the possibilities are:
- 56 is out of the question for a 60 card deck, and so is 35 really.
- 49 cards means we have 55 cards not in play or in exile. This ranges from 2/3 play/exile (possible with just SSG) to 5/0 in play/exile.
- 42 cards means 48 cards not in play or in exile. This ranges from 2/10 play/exile to 12/0 in play/exile.
So we have a combo range for cards in play/in exile when they equal 5 or 12. with 8 exile effects (SSG/CC) that's 4 cards that need to be in play to hit the 12 card mark. Mind you 5 is easy to hit with only 1 SSG at that point, but if you somehow play 4 lands, have a Stinkweed Imp, and Griselbrand in play then you'll be stuck and need to exile up to 12 cards.
I'll test with the 8/8 SSG/CC split and see how the combo works. I've been liking Insolent Neonate too, since it has Menace you can get in the 1 damage for the Griselbrand + 4x CC kill if the opponent is playing a painless manabase. It also makes Emrakul kills trivial.
I've been looking to build this since uma gave us some really good reprints. This new list looks like the pieces are more useful outside of the combo. I don't know if there is space somewhere, but could a single boseiju be useful somewhere?
The SB plan seems much better in your most recent list since you have ways to get a faster breach, while also having less dead cards to board! Looks good.
That list looks to be only 57 cards Searys. Also in regards to this comment
"Well about it i'm 99% sure that i can attain a 7 multiple with only the 2 phantasmagorians with any library/grave state, prove me wrong"
How do you get a multiple of 7 with a 48 card deck with 7 in hand? You can at most discard 7 cards to gorian (2, 2, 3) and at minimum 2. You cant discard 8 (since your hand is 7 cards) nor 1 (since gorian has to at least discard 2) which means you cant make it to 49 NOR 56.
Also in your current version, how do you get the red mana to cast the neonate after you have infinite life? You have no spirit guides.
There are 4 stinkweed imps in there already, so I don't think thats whats missing. Is it missing the SSGs? Without SSG, I dont even know how we are casting the neonate post infinite life.
for example: to cast neonate and then cast plunge, we need 2 red to start off, meaning we need 2 ssgs to start this loop. Also, with your entire deck in your hand after activating griselbrand a multiple of 7 times, when you cast looting, you will actually die to decking yourself (since you need to draw 2 and your entire deck is your hand)
Maybe one way to mitigate this would be to run 2 faerie macabre, discard them for free, then use 2 (for a total of 3 main deck) noxious revivals to put them into our deck, allowing us to cast faithless looting without dying, and continue the infinite life loop. Otherwise, this infinite mana loop doesnt work. That being said, 2 faerie macabre and 3 noxious revivals is a ton of wasted space main deck, and the goal is to make this deck leaner.
But you might have a mana problem (need 2 initial SSG) then AND you need two Neonates to pull it off (cause Neonate + Plunge costs 2, nets you 3, you have one mana "free" to go Neonate again to get the discard, you need two mana to again go Neonate + Plunge). Though, shouldn't be that big of an problem.
However, if you can set Neonate + Plunge up, than you should be free to get to a point, where you can divide your deck by 7 (cause you have a draw 1, draw 2 and the discard from the Phantasmo).
Greetings,
Kathal
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Hello! Long time lurker here, and I finally proxied this bad boy up. I have a potential innovation and a question.
EDIT: Whoops... postmortem lunge is a sorcery...so maybe we can still make this work with a manamorphose and a footsteps of the goryo, but perhaps I need to just follow along with the class. My confusion about the end state still stands, so any clarification thereof would be great. Thank you! /EDIT
1. I am attempting to leverage Laboratory Maniac as my win condition. I don't know if its good, just seems less "complicated" than the other loops, at least to explain to opponents. To make this work, I am playing with Simian Spirit Guide, and single copy of each Desperate Ritual and Postmortem Lunge. The idea is to execute the "initial state" combo, and when we discard to hand size we can respond to the emrakul, the aeons torn trigger by floating two off of SSG, Desparate for three, then pay 2 life and 3 red to cast the lunge on Laboratory Maniac, then we can draw for the win.
However, my problem is that I can't seem to reason how to prevent Griselbrand from exiling at end step, or to setup a state where I can reanimate another copy after the first was exiled. This is my question, what am I missing about the combo, that I can't seem to goldfish myself into the proper gamestate to have Griselbrand to draw during the "discard to handsize" phase of the game (which is used by the Gut Shot combo in other versions).
Anyone have any thoughts on the Lab man kill or my confusion around the execution?
When you say easier, do you mean easier to execute? Lighting storm seems pretty lean too in terms of the number of pieces. Lightning storm is also not useless if you aren't going off.
Still lightning storm is the "easy kill" i's say for me it's more like the "nobrain" kill (not insulting, it can be really useful to just say "i kill you" without thinking more) but it's suboptimal and plunge is a way better kill in term of utility out of combo.
I'm still tweeking the list, not stable enough for me, ideally the deck shouldn't "fizzle" in goldfish mode more than 10% of the time, actually we're between 15 and 20% i guess (i consider "fizzle" the fact to combo off after t5 or to not combo at all)
And btw good news for DBZ KCI got the banhammer, actually i think that the decks are REALLY similar, they have nearly the same speed and fear the same things, so basically the gravehate will be less prevalent sooo good thing!
Good new, in reality we never have any problem to draw the entire deck and i will explain why.
And for those who don't understand what i'm talking about, i will re-explain how the whole deck is working and that will be the base for a primer (this deck needs one)
DredgeBrand'z (AKA DBZ) is a deck using the interactions between griselbrandgoryo's vengeanceand the dredge ability.
Using the dredge as a tutor engine:
It got multiple layers of interactions, the first one being to use a dredge engine to bin griselbrand into the graveyard much more constantly than any other deck, in combination with secrets of the mausoleum which makes good use of the dredge too to catch [card]goryo's vengeance[/card, the deck is really able to reanimate griselbrand in a constant manner and fast too.
Basically, if you have mausoleum, goryo's vengeance or the one copy of footstep of the goryo in hand, the only thing you have to do i dredge until griselbrand hit the yard, easy no?
But you will ask me why do we want grisel on the battlefield if we're not playing shoals like the other versions? Well the funnier part is coming!
We are now in a state where griselbrand is into play, and we have some dredgers in the graveyard, it's time to draw! We pay 7 life then draw, but each draw will be replaced by a dredge, we have two goals to achieve, either we chain the dredgers, either we dredge a phantasmagoriansometime none of the two options will be realized but it's for another topic as it's somewhat rare.
The main engine here isgolgari brownscale, the more you dredge, the more cards will be in your grave, phantasmagorian or golgari brownscale, and if you dredge a brownscale, when you resolve it's ability, you will have payed 7 life, but will regain 2 by brownscale you dredged.
You will then be able to discard the brownscales and other dredgers with the phantasmagorian ability you just dredged, and you will do that again in response to the phantasmagorian ability in the stack.
During the process, we will probably dredge emrakul, no problem we continue to dredge and discard with phantasmagorian in response to it's ability. (keeping in mind the rakul ability, it will come handy )
Ultimately (i swear!) you will find yourself with this gamestate:
Griselbrand in play, we have 2 Blightsteel colossus in library, 4 Golgari brownscale 1 dakmore salvage and 1 phantasmagorian in graveyard, and 1 phantasmagorian in hand.
I pay 7 for a draw 7, i dredge the 4 golgari brownscale and the dakmore salvage, then draw 2 the 2 blighsteel colossus
I then gain 8 life with brownscale, i use phantasmagorian's ability, discarding 4 brownscale 1 dakmore salvage and the phantasmagorian in hand, i resolve the ability phantasmagorian return in hand. (still the first one is now in the grave)
I then have 2 blightsteel colossus and phantasmagorian in hand, i use the ability of phantasmagorian again discarding the two blightseel and phantasmagorian, the blightsteels colossus are shuffled in library, i resolve, phantasmagorian is back in hand.
we then are back to the Initial state except we now have one more life.
The loop have been demonstrated, you just have to say you're doing this 1 million times, and we go now to the emrakul trigger, you forgot it?
Calculate and draw your library!
The main point here is to, by resolving emrakul ability, create a 7 multiple to be able to draw our entire library without randomness, we don't like random.
Actually, the best way to picture the number of cards you will have in your library is to count the cards in your library+ the cards in your graveyard, and to consider the cards you discard with phantasmagorian as +3 cards in your future library and any card leaving your grave as -1 card in your future library.
The two "tricks" are, discard gorian for gorian+2 other cards +2 cards in library, and the second trick is discards 3 and in response to the ability discard gorian +2 other cards, it's doing a +5 cards in future library.
I will ask you to trust me on this one, we did the math and we are able with two phantasmagorian to do:
+2 cards in future library / 3 cards in hand minimum
+4 cards in future library / 5
cards in hand minimum
+5 cards in future library / 6 cards in hand minimum
+6 cards in future library / 7 cards in hand minimum
+7 cards in future library / 8 cards in hand minimum
+8 cards in future library / 9 cards in hand minimum
+9 cards in future library / 10 cards in hand minimum
+10 cards in future library / 11 cards in hand minimum
Ok so now for the persons already aware of the deck, do you see that? In fasct the initial phase of comboing will ALWAYS get us to have more than 11 cards in hand, and here the +8 cards in grave can replace our inability to do a +1, as the +10 cards can replace the +3, in short:
as long as we have 11 cards in hand at this point (read = always) of the game, we can do a multiple of 7 only with phantasmagorian
After drawing, we can automate the loop. We can Gut Shot, discard all our cards down to 7, and then resolve the Emrakul trigger. But then when we reshuffle, we have a non-determinate state of our library order and the order that we draw cards. Does this mean we have to manually execute all stages of the combo?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
StaffThe only grey area I can see is does activating Griselbrand X times constitute as non-deterministic if the final outcome is the same each time. Since the final outcome will always be "I have all of my library in my hand, and I will always cast Gutshot and discard Emmy" then I can't find anything against that.
I have run this deck by other players but not judges, so I'll also ask the few of them who frequent my shops next week to get more opinions.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Right, so this is my issue. If my library has 42 cards in it, my hand has 7, and the board/exile zone have the remaining 11 cards, I know I can draw my deck with Griselbrand. I can say activate Griselbrand 6 times, draw library, move to cleanup step." Now I begin my loop: "discard to hand size discarding Emrakul, Emrakul triggers, cast/resolve Gut Shot, resolve Emrakul trigger and reshuffle, restart cleanup phase, discard to hand size discarding Emrakul, Emrakul trigger..." etc. etc. This results in infinite Gut Shot casts as long as you have infinite life.
BUT, when you reshuffle, your library is in a non-deterministic game state at the end of each shuffle. AND when you draw your cards, you draw them in non-determinstic batches of 7. So I'm not sure this is loopable. I do not think that the act of shuffling ALONE destroys the loop, because the Gut Shot casting does advance the game state by 1 life point at a time.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Staffie every part of the combo is known:
- Start at X life with your deck in your hand
1) Do the Gutshot steps..... cast Gutshot, opponent is at N-1 life, you are at X-2 life, discard to hand size, etc...
2) Always activate Griselbrand Y times where Y is (Number of cards in deck)/7, resulting in you losing Y*7 life, and putting your net life at X-N*(2+Y*7), where N is number of loops done (aka opponents life total)
On each iteration of the loop you then have:
- Opponent at N-1 life
- You at X-N*(2+Y*7) life
- All cards in your deck in your hand moving into step 2 again.
You can demonstrate the loop by drawing your entire deck and showing that there is no way you can't have both Gutshot and Emmy is hand. Then you show the combo by always casting Gut Shot, and always discarding Emmy among the other cards discarded to hand size. At each final state of the combo there is nothing that is random (like Legacy Four Horsemen) that could change the result. You can know the boardstate at every iteration of the combo. For example, say the opponent is at 20 life, you are at 1,000,000 life. You active the loop 20 times, with 42 cards in your deck, then up at 999,120 life with the opponent at 0 (1,000,000-20*(2+6*7)). You can always backtrack and calculate it at any iteration of the loop.
AFAICT this makes it a legit loop that can be preformed at Comp REL. But as I said earlier I will as some judges in person next week. Writing it out like this will make it easier to explain though.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Yep, totally agree with the description. Just let me/us know if a judge thinks it's okay that we don't know the order we are drawing our cards.
Played at a local small tournament vs:
GW Soul Sister (2-0)
Ad Nauseam (2-0)
Mardu Pyromancer (1-2)
Death and Taxes (0-2)
What I played:
18 lands (with 2 Temple of Malice and 2 Salvages)
7 Reanimation spells
9 Combo Creatures (4 Grisel, 2 Blightsteel, 1 Emmi, 2 Phantasmo)
8 Dig Spells (4 Lootings, 4 Hugs)
13 Dredgers (4 Imps, 4 Brownscale, 1 Thug, 2 Dark Blast, 2 Darkmore Salvages)
8 "utility spells" (4 SSG, 1 Gutshot, 1 Noxious Revival, 1 Manamorphose, 1 Lightning Axe)
=61 cards (2 Darkmore Salvages are counted twice)
SB:
4 TTB, 1 Quicksilver Amulet, 1 Bligthsteel, 3 Leyline of Sanctity, 2 Defense Grid, 2 Pact of Negation, 1 Temple of Malice, 1 Desperate Ritual
What I learned:
- Pre board is bonkers, post board is dog***** tier.
- TTB SB plan is not great at all, it works somewhat, but you need to pack a lot of interaction into the SB to be able to pull it off. I would play one TTB and 2 Desperate Rituals post board, so that you can go for a Blightsteel/Emrakul TTB win if needed (Leyline of Sanctity turns of Gutshot)
- The "transformal" SB sucks balls, to many dead cards MD to be able to board all of them out. Would instead go into W and/or G for Enchantment/Artefact removal and Pull of Eternity, so that you can get back your exiled cards. However, even this plan just sucks :/ Honestly, I have no idea what we can do here.
- The deck feels clunky sometimes, got better with the inclusion of Temples (cause more "draw spells"). Kinda would want to run 2 Tormenting Voices along the 8 Cnatrips to be able to find/discard the stuff I need.
Conclusio: Since I do not have that much time playing atm (nor will I have in the near future), I will put this deck on "hold" and maybe come back to it later, when it gets more refined. The post board games are the crucial aspect, which needs to get looked at. Also, having close to no time at all developing a deck sucks, but nothing I can do here :/
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
So you are telling me the people you play against will allow you to to reanimate gristlebrand and get infinate life and infinate card draw? Effectively allowing you to sculpt the perfect hand since you can just draw your deck and shuffle everything back by pitching Emmy. But they will attempt to counter your conflagerate? Dude! Where do you play? I'm on the way! Free packs is free packs! Joking... (Not really) but speaking of free packs... why not include some number of pact of negation to make sure they can't counter your conflagerate (lolz)?
Then you don't need a judge ruling, putting in cut and pull from eternity, counting cards, etc. Just win.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
StaffThere was one hiccup where I made the comparison to Four Horsemen for non-deterministic loops, which got him kinda riled up, saying "This sounds a lot like like Four Horsemen, you shouldn't even play it at a tournament. A judge would love to come over and give you slow play" which completely missed the point... Trudging though this, the thought was that the only grey area of the combo, as with most loops, is that if the opponent has any interaction then you have to play out the combo.
From the deck's perspective, the only time an opponent should activate some grave hate is either to stop you from reanimating Gristle, or when Gut Shot/Emmy are in the yard and Emmy's trigger is on the stack so you can exile either piece. They're not going to play somehting when you have drawn 21 cards and still need to draw 21 more, that just doesn't make any sense. If you demonstrate the kill-loop, then I don't see why an opponent can't interject with "I want to activate Relic/cast Surgical/other gravehate etc..." at X point of the loop stop it. That's how any other deck works, so it should work for this one.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
On that same note, do we even need to kill them? Most decks except ad nauseum and coco cant beat infinite life and never milling. We can sb cards that actually kill them like gut shot in this matchups, as we already auto win and can pass turn forever.
Also, could reforge the soul lead to earlier kills? It can dump our dredgers whilst also giving us a ton of draws to dredge with to start set up the combo.
Does the transformative sb into grishoalbrand breach not beat gy hate?
Unfortunately yes you do need to actually kill them. Right now Teferi is in quite a few decks. This card allows them to never mill out also. There are also infinate damage combos in the meta (although shrinking) devoted druid combo for instance. I see no problem SB'ing into a win con less deck if not facing one of those decks however. Would be funny to win game one against burn then SB out all win cons and get get life then just keep passing turns until they scoop. Those slots could be used to make it more consistent at comboing rather than fighting a particular plan.
What did you think about the infinite turns/ Geiers Sanctum approach? It cuts the win con (gut shot etc) slot and still wins the game. It also doesn't seem to fall victim to the problems listed by Kathal below:
"
Pro: Only needs 2 R to actually win the game (which is not a problem realistically)
Con: Relative clunky to execute since you cannot show a loop (like with Gutshot) but you have to execute it through, which might result into mistakes. Also needs a Lightning Axe MD
Regarding Lightning Storm:
Pro: Only one loop to set-up (ditch Phantasmo, set up the Infinite Life combo again and ditch Salvage to Lightning Storm for Infinite damage)
Con: Needs 4 Mana and thus with no land drops it might result into problems (noticed it a couple of times when goldfishing the deck) and needs a MD Lightning Axe
Regarding Gutshot:
Pro: You can set-up a loop to win AND stuff like Angel's Grace cannot do anything against it (since you abuse the Clean-up step for this)
Con: You need your endstep and the Griselbrand in there, which is a problem when you want to reanimate earlier to be able to attack. Also not doable with Footsteps, since Grisel dies at the EoT step.
"
Also Searys, on your last posted decklist you tried in tournament, I don't see any win cons.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
StaffThe deck looks like this right now when subbing in Secrets of the Mausoleum for Noxious Revival:
4 Griselbrand
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Golgari Brownscale
2 Phantasmagorian
2 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Support Cards
2 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Faithless Looting
4 Cathartic Reunion
2 Secrets of the Mausoleum
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lightning Axe
2 Darkblast
1 Collective Brutality
1 Gut Shot
1 Lightning Storm
Lands
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
2 Dakmor Salvage
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Footsteps of the Goryo
1 Noxious Revival
4 Griselbrand
1 Borborygmos Enraged
2 Phantasmagorian
2 Progenitus
4 Golgari Brownscale
3 Stinkweed Imp
3 Darkblast
4 Faithless Looting
4 Cathartic Reunion
4 Noose Constrictor
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 of each RGB shock
1 of each RGB basic
4 BR fetch
3 BG fetch
2 RG fetch
2 Dakmor Salvage
SB:
4 Thoughtseize
4 Nature's Claim
1 Ancient Grudge
3 Lightning Axe
1 Sickening Shoal
1 Leyline of the Void
1 The Gitrog Monster
R1: 0-2 vs Bant Spirits (had T2 combo on the play, then got repaired)
R2: 2-0 vs 4c Geist
R3: 2-0 vs Humans
R4: 2-0 vs Tribal Flames Zoo
R5: 2-1 vs Mardu Pyromancer
R6: ID
QF: 0-2 vs Titanshift (best matchup in T8, so this stung a bit)
Noose Constrictors were intended as solid blockers vs aggro (especially Spirits), discard outlets that let you kill the same turn without resorting to Emrakul loops that mess up your dredge, and threats that can sometimes win games vs RIP/Leyline. They were fine at all of that but I'm not convinced the deck wants them.
The basic shell felt very strong; after years of messing around with various Griselbrand decks, the Brownscale synergy was a breath of fresh air. This deck gains more than almost any other from Guilds between Secrets of the Mausoleum and Assassin's Trophy, so I'm excited to explore it further!
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Staff1) We only care about our life total, and having more of it is beneficial as we can potentially activate Griselbrand again when we are trying to dredge our library into the graveyard.
2) The possibly more important clause is that the text of the card reads "When Creeping Chill is put into your graveyard from your library, you may exile it. If you do, Creeping Chill deals 3 damage to each opponent and you gain 3 life." It's the may ability which is relevant here as it allows us to permanently remove a card from our deck. If we need a deck which is divisible by 7 in order to do the Gut Shot kill, so having cards which can be exiled to reduce our deck size is key here. Simian Spirit Guide is another card that allows us to do that, making 8 cards in the deck which can modify its size. In a typical game there will be ~3-5 permanents in play, meaning your deck will have at most ~50-48 cards in it. We need to get to 42 cards at this point, so having 8 exile effects comfortably gets us there. Even playing 4 SSG and 2 CC should be able to get us at 42 cards in the deck with anywhere from 2 Lands + GristleB in play to 5 Lands + GristleB in play.
3) You can surprise kill with dredging 4 Creeping Chill (12 damage) + a hasty Griselbrand (19 damage), and assuming they cracked a fetch/took a shock they will be dead.
So what I'm wondering is, is it worth it to play essentially a "dead draw" that doesn't have Dredge, with the upside of potentially smoothing the combo for both combat step and making a consistent infinite combo with Gut Shot.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
StaffIn the end step after having infinite life allowing for infinite Griselbrand activations:
1) Activate Griselbrand X times to draw you deck (which is divisible by 7). You whole deck is now in your hand
2) Discard down to a any 7 card hand that includes Gut Shot still in it. Your graveyard now has your deck -7 cards in it.
3) Emmy triggers, giving you priority to cast Gut Shot. Do that, and your graveyard now has your deck -6 cards in it.
4) The Emmy trigger resolves and shuffles your graveyard back into your deck. This creates a new cleanup step and priority for both players, allowing you to start steps 1-4 over again.
The number of cards shuffled back in during stop 4 must be divisible by 7 in order to repeat steps 1-4 "infinite" times since it's a requirement for stop 1. You can't have more than 6 cards in your hand since you have to discard down to 7 cards in the cleanup step, and then you still need to cast Gut Shot.
This does mean my numbers were kindof wrong, since you need a 56/49/42/35 card "deck", but 6 of those will be perma stuck in your hand. So looking at it again the possibilities are:
- 56 is out of the question for a 60 card deck, and so is 35 really.
- 49 cards means we have 55 cards not in play or in exile. This ranges from 2/3 play/exile (possible with just SSG) to 5/0 in play/exile.
- 42 cards means 48 cards not in play or in exile. This ranges from 2/10 play/exile to 12/0 in play/exile.
So we have a combo range for cards in play/in exile when they equal 5 or 12. with 8 exile effects (SSG/CC) that's 4 cards that need to be in play to hit the 12 card mark. Mind you 5 is easy to hit with only 1 SSG at that point, but if you somehow play 4 lands, have a Stinkweed Imp, and Griselbrand in play then you'll be stuck and need to exile up to 12 cards.
I'll test with the 8/8 SSG/CC split and see how the combo works. I've been liking Insolent Neonate too, since it has Menace you can get in the 1 damage for the Griselbrand + 4x CC kill if the opponent is playing a painless manabase. It also makes Emrakul kills trivial.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
The SB plan seems much better in your most recent list since you have ways to get a faster breach, while also having less dead cards to board! Looks good.
"Well about it i'm 99% sure that i can attain a 7 multiple with only the 2 phantasmagorians with any library/grave state, prove me wrong"
How do you get a multiple of 7 with a 48 card deck with 7 in hand? You can at most discard 7 cards to gorian (2, 2, 3) and at minimum 2. You cant discard 8 (since your hand is 7 cards) nor 1 (since gorian has to at least discard 2) which means you cant make it to 49 NOR 56.
Also in your current version, how do you get the red mana to cast the neonate after you have infinite life? You have no spirit guides.
for example: to cast neonate and then cast plunge, we need 2 red to start off, meaning we need 2 ssgs to start this loop. Also, with your entire deck in your hand after activating griselbrand a multiple of 7 times, when you cast looting, you will actually die to decking yourself (since you need to draw 2 and your entire deck is your hand)
Maybe one way to mitigate this would be to run 2 faerie macabre, discard them for free, then use 2 (for a total of 3 main deck) noxious revivals to put them into our deck, allowing us to cast faithless looting without dying, and continue the infinite life loop. Otherwise, this infinite mana loop doesnt work. That being said, 2 faerie macabre and 3 noxious revivals is a ton of wasted space main deck, and the goal is to make this deck leaner.
However, if you can set Neonate + Plunge up, than you should be free to get to a point, where you can divide your deck by 7 (cause you have a draw 1, draw 2 and the discard from the Phantasmo).
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
EDIT: Whoops... postmortem lunge is a sorcery...
so maybe we can still make this work with a manamorphose and a footsteps of the goryo, butperhaps I need to just follow along with the class. My confusion about the end state still stands, so any clarification thereof would be great. Thank you! /EDIT1.
I am attempting to leverage Laboratory Maniac as my win condition. I don't know if its good, just seems less "complicated" than the other loops, at least to explain to opponents. To make this work, I am playing with Simian Spirit Guide, and single copy of each Desperate Ritual and Postmortem Lunge.The idea is to execute the "initial state" combo, and when we discard to hand size we can respond to the emrakul, the aeons torn trigger by floating two off of SSG, Desparate for three, then pay 2 life and 3 red to cast the lunge on Laboratory Maniac, then we can draw for the win.However, my problem is that I can't seem to reason how to prevent Griselbrand from exiling at end step, or to setup a state where I can reanimate another copy after the first was exiled. This is my question, what am I missing about the combo, that I can't seem to goldfish myself into the proper gamestate to have Griselbrand to draw during the "discard to handsize" phase of the game (which is used by the Gut Shot combo in other versions).
Anyone have any thoughts on the Lab man kill or my confusion around the execution?
Thank you!
Still lightning storm is the "easy kill" i's say for me it's more like the "nobrain" kill (not insulting, it can be really useful to just say "i kill you" without thinking more) but it's suboptimal and plunge is a way better kill in term of utility out of combo.
I'm still tweeking the list, not stable enough for me, ideally the deck shouldn't "fizzle" in goldfish mode more than 10% of the time, actually we're between 15 and 20% i guess (i consider "fizzle" the fact to combo off after t5 or to not combo at all)
And btw good news for DBZ KCI got the banhammer, actually i think that the decks are REALLY similar, they have nearly the same speed and fear the same things, so basically the gravehate will be less prevalent sooo good thing!
Good new, in reality we never have any problem to draw the entire deck and i will explain why.
And for those who don't understand what i'm talking about, i will re-explain how the whole deck is working and that will be the base for a primer (this deck needs one)
DredgeBrand'z (AKA DBZ) is a deck using the interactions between griselbrandgoryo's vengeanceand the dredge ability.
Using the dredge as a tutor engine:
It got multiple layers of interactions, the first one being to use a dredge engine to bin griselbrand into the graveyard much more constantly than any other deck, in combination with secrets of the mausoleum which makes good use of the dredge too to catch [card]goryo's vengeance[/card, the deck is really able to reanimate griselbrand in a constant manner and fast too.
Basically, if you have mausoleum, goryo's vengeance or the one copy of footstep of the goryo in hand, the only thing you have to do i dredge until griselbrand hit the yard, easy no?
But you will ask me why do we want grisel on the battlefield if we're not playing shoals like the other versions? Well the funnier part is coming!
Using the dredge and golgari brownscale as a combo engine:
We are now in a state where griselbrand is into play, and we have some dredgers in the graveyard, it's time to draw! We pay 7 life then draw, but each draw will be replaced by a dredge, we have two goals to achieve, either we chain the dredgers, either we dredge a phantasmagoriansometime none of the two options will be realized but it's for another topic as it's somewhat rare.
The main engine here isgolgari brownscale, the more you dredge, the more cards will be in your grave, phantasmagorian or golgari brownscale, and if you dredge a brownscale, when you resolve it's ability, you will have payed 7 life, but will regain 2 by brownscale you dredged.
You will then be able to discard the brownscales and other dredgers with the phantasmagorian ability you just dredged, and you will do that again in response to the phantasmagorian ability in the stack.
During the process, we will probably dredge emrakul, no problem we continue to dredge and discard with phantasmagorian in response to it's ability. (keeping in mind the rakul ability, it will come handy
Using golgary brownscale , griselbrand , phantasmagorian and blighsteel colossusto go infinite!
Ultimately (i swear!) you will find yourself with this gamestate:
Griselbrand in play, we have 2 Blightsteel colossus in library, 4 Golgari brownscale 1 dakmore salvage and 1 phantasmagorian in graveyard, and 1 phantasmagorian in hand.
I pay 7 for a draw 7, i dredge the 4 golgari brownscale and the dakmore salvage, then draw 2 the 2 blighsteel colossus
I then gain 8 life with brownscale, i use phantasmagorian's ability, discarding 4 brownscale 1 dakmore salvage and the phantasmagorian in hand, i resolve the ability phantasmagorian return in hand. (still the first one is now in the grave)
I then have 2 blightsteel colossus and phantasmagorian in hand, i use the ability of phantasmagorian again discarding the two blightseel and phantasmagorian, the blightsteels colossus are shuffled in library, i resolve, phantasmagorian is back in hand.
we then are back to the Initial state except we now have one more life.
The loop have been demonstrated, you just have to say you're doing this 1 million times, and we go now to the emrakul trigger, you forgot it?
Calculate and draw your library!
The main point here is to, by resolving emrakul ability, create a 7 multiple to be able to draw our entire library without randomness, we don't like random.
Actually, the best way to picture the number of cards you will have in your library is to count the cards in your library+ the cards in your graveyard, and to consider the cards you discard with phantasmagorian as +3 cards in your future library and any card leaving your grave as -1 card in your future library.
The two "tricks" are, discard gorian for gorian+2 other cards +2 cards in library, and the second trick is discards 3 and in response to the ability discard gorian +2 other cards, it's doing a +5 cards in future library.
I will ask you to trust me on this one, we did the math and we are able with two phantasmagorian to do:
+2 cards in future library / 3 cards in hand minimum
+4 cards in future library / 5
cards in hand minimum
+5 cards in future library / 6 cards in hand minimum
+6 cards in future library / 7 cards in hand minimum
+7 cards in future library / 8 cards in hand minimum
+8 cards in future library / 9 cards in hand minimum
+9 cards in future library / 10 cards in hand minimum
+10 cards in future library / 11 cards in hand minimum
Ok so now for the persons already aware of the deck, do you see that? In fasct the initial phase of comboing will ALWAYS get us to have more than 11 cards in hand, and here the +8 cards in grave can replace our inability to do a +1, as the +10 cards can replace the +3, in short:
as long as we have 11 cards in hand at this point (read = always) of the game, we can do a multiple of 7 only with phantasmagorian
It's making the biggest problem disappear !