The Twinflame strategy works with Chromatic Orrery.Quote from Deedlit11 »I saw it mentioned that Mondrak, Glory Dominus, Ratadrabik of Urborg, and Croaking Counterpart would get you more than 2^^2^^18 for the 3 card unlimited mana category. For the 6 card no extra mana category, I don't know of a way to get the needed mana to flasback Croaking Counterpart, so for this it's probably still Black Lotus + Show and Tell + Omniscience + Mondrak, Glory Dominus + Ratadrabik of Urborg + Twinflame for more than 2^^2^^7.
Edit: Yeah, we don't have quite enough life to make it work with Mycosynth Lattice. We need 8 colored mana, so Bucknard's Everfull Purse is not enough; it would be with the aid of Mondrak, but we have to cast Bucknard's first.
Edit: Bleah, I forgot that Twinflame needed extra mana too... okay I'm not sure what's best in the 6 card category then.
Edit: Oh, we only need one more target for Twinflame, which we can get with Mycosynth Lattice.
Edit: Oh I see... Croaking Counterpart doesn't give haste, so the damage is for the *next* turn.
I've started putting together a new writeup focusing specifically on 4, 5, 6, 8, and 14 cards, since those seem like the biggest milestones here, but I haven't been sure how to fully explain what we're doing with the mini-computation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m_KIi_DXqzRn-nR_MHMXPVl9wvn3Z2ZLq-I_7efE6yg
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Lets look at this gamestate: We have both Engineered Explosives in hand, one Western Paladin is in the graveyard, the other Western Paladin is exiled under a Spell Queller. All the instants and sorceries are under the same Spell Queller as well. Vedalken Orrery is exiled under the other Spell Queller.
On the Battlefield we have at least one Orrery token and one hasty untapped Western Paladin token. We also have a bunch of Psychic Battles and [c]Bloodbond March[c]es and the other usual stuff.
On the stack is a Mirrorworks trigger for Vedalken Orrery and say 10 layers worth of Metallurgeon PB and BM triggers.
Onto the infinite loop:
We can tap a Western Paladin token to get <enough> PB triggers.
We can use 1 of these triggers to resolve a Make a Stand copy:
-- Use the PB to bounce the original Spell Queller with all those instants and sorceries. Cast all of the spells under it.
-- Recast the Spell Queller and exile all those spells again.
-- Resolve all the Swarm Intelligence triggers we got. Refuse to copy any spells you don't wan't to resolve here, but get a copy of and resolve.
We are back to where we were before, except with 1 PB trigger less and all creatures are now indestructible.
We can use the same procedure to cast any of the other instants/sorceries or use Bloodbond March for Western Paladin. So lets do that:
- Use 1 PB to bring Western Paladin to the battlefield.
- Cast Engineered Explosives from hand so that it gets 4 counters.
- Explode the Explosives, imprint Western Paladin on Mimic Vat. Create a hasty untapped token Western Paladin and move the card to the graveyard.
- cast the second Engineered Explosive to trigger Mishra, Artificer Prodigy and get the first copy back to the abttlefield.
- Use 1 PB to bounce all artifacts, including the Explosives.
- Use 1 PB to bounce the Spell Queller that exiles Vadalken Orrery. Cast and resolve that.
- Use 1 PB to make creatures indestructible again, including the new Western Paladin token and the Orrery.
- Use 1 PB to bring Western Paladin to the battlefield.
- Cast Engineered Explosives from hand so that it gets 4 counters.
- Explode the Explosives, imprint Western Paladin on Mimic Vat. Create a hasty untapped token Western Paladin and move the card to the graveyard.
- cast the second Engineered Explosive to trigger Mishra, Artificer Prodigy and get the first copy back to the abttlefield.
- Use 1 PB to bounce all artifacts, including the Explosives.
We are back to where we started except that we have one additional Western Paladin token and the Vedalken Orrery is not exiled under a Spell Queller any more. Instead we have the Orrery on the Battlefield and 1 Spell Queller in hand.
Resolve the Mirrorworks trigger to get back instant speed capability via Vedalken Orrery token.
Use the Metallurgeon layers to create 10 layers worth of hasty, tapped Metallurgeon tokens along with the 5 hasty untapped tokens we can get out of them. This also lets us top off on mana and vastly increase the numbers of our enchantments, so progress is made. The stack is now empty.
Tap one hasty Western Paladin token to get <enough> PB triggers. Use 1 PB to untap all those hasty Metallurgeons.
Use the Metallurgeons to put 10 layers worth of triggers on the stack. Look at the rest of them and don't care because we are going infinite anyway~
Cast Orrery, get a Mirrorworks trigger and use one of the untapped Metallurgeons to bounce it again. Cast Orrery, cast Queller and let it exile the Orrery.
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The 1 Queller version of the Hyperstage seems to work! Having that token based Hyperstage is a great step towards building an Ultrastage.
I haven't looked to deep into the Mega and Ultra stages proposed here yet. You are right to keep in mind the Vedalken Orrery under Spell Queller as a danger for them. With spare Western Paladins from the higher Hyperstage getting the Orrery under there would be basically free, so there is a lot of danger. I'm not sure if it is enough to make Omniscience hard to get back. I guess it depends on what specifically needs to be done to double dip on the resource generation of a transition.
Separating the different types of stages via cheap instants, expensive instants and sorceries looks like a good plan. Could be workable.
Making sure that the Mega and Ultra stages use up the extra substage resources they create during the transition is indeed important and seems like a hard problem.
When we were constructing the Megastage we eventually resorted to using lifecost flashback spells of the same color as the hyperstage for the mana -> life setup. i.e. Chatter of the Squirrel + Acorn Harvest. For the life -> mana setup we had to use lifecost flashback spells for both.
Seperating the cost form the actual triggering spell, for example with painlands would often go infinite because we could convert the life into mana in the higher substage and keep it through the transition. So you have to make sure that the entire payment for triggering the Ultrastage can only be made after reolving the transition.
Not sure how that is supposed to work when the cost should include mana, life and a token/explosives activation... With Fumarole for example I don't see how you are using green? But Worldpurge gets you both the Tropical Island and the Pale Recluse into your hand, so that's 2 green generated right there.
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2 Grip of Chaos
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Dual Nature
14 Copy Enchantment
15 Allay
16 Su-Chi
17 Farrelite Priest
18 Metallurgeon
19 Chatter of the Squirrel
20 Battle Cry
21 Rebuild
22 Spellweaver Volute
23 Mox Emerald
25 Vile Redeemer
26 Deconstruct
27 Precursor Golem
28 Worldpurge
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Acorn Harvest
31 Acorn Harvest
32 Primeval Titan
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Radiant Fountain
35 Glimmerpost
36 Hurloon Shaman
37 Anaba Ancestor
38 Ruin Ghost
39 Tropical Island
40 Spectral Shepherd
41 Goblin Welder
42 Mad Auntie
43 Godtoucher
44 Everglove Courier
46 Ghosthelm Courier
47 Possessed Aven
48 Centaur Archer
49 Maze Glider
50 Possessed Centaur
51 Eastern Paladin
52 Frightshroud Courier
53 Dwarven Warriors
54 Possessed Barbarian
55 Minion of Tevesh Szat
56 Reality Spasm
57 Consecrated Sphinx
58 Noggle Ransacker
59 Channel
60 Black Lotus
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Ruin Ghost
Spectral Shepherd
That stage just begs to transition into Anaba Ancestor. We can get out of that using 3 cards:
Tamanoa
Dingus Egg
Hurloon Shaman
That actually gets us to 13 stages using 3 extra cards.
Is a start with fewer cards possible for that?
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I found two ways to go infinite with your cards.
First, it is possible to create token copies of Weaver of Lies (while it is face up), then redraw the original, play it face down and use its ability to turn some of the tokens face down. Then you can use the ability of those tokens to turn the original face down again. They can keep flipping each other over infinitely, supplying you with face down Kheru Spellsnatcher without ever needing to draw another creature.
Second, it is possible to play Aura of Dominion on Mimic Vat instead of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. Specifically on the Mimic Vat that has Selvala, Heart of the Wilds imprinted. Tapping that Mimic Vat then gives a bunch of those Selvalas, which can in turn tap for mana and use the Aura of Dominions ability to untap the Mimic Vat again.
In general I like the structure of your layers after Paradox Engine, but the stuff you do with the Paradox Engines untaps looks like a mess. The relevant parts seem to be getting Selvala V2 tokens, getting Mana, using that mana to untap Kiki-Jiki and creating more Doubling Seasons. All those alternate ways to increase the number of creatures and counters wouldn't even show up in the estimate (even if that wasn't infinite) and in so far as you need to draw Krenko, Mob Boss, you are better off leaving him in the library and drawing Weaver of Lies one more time. Even assuming the draw is free, spending mana on Ooze Flux would be detrimental. The main problem with those cards is that they only increase the output of Selvala V2, but not the number of Doubling Seasons. The latter is what your main progress is dependent on. A single card to tie Selvala's output to the number of doubling seasons would be more efficient, leaving room to increase your numbers at more significant parts of the combo, like those lifegain spells.
I'm also not a fan of using almost 30 copies of the same card, but I guess as long as you don't have a better use for those cards it can't be helped. Just keep in mind to insert multiples as deep in your layer combo as possible.
I hope you don't get discouraged by all that criticism I just heaped on you and keep on building non infinite damage combos
@Deedlit11
Huh, the Worldpurge version is closer than I thought. Although we need to get rid of two infinites before/while we cut cards there.
First, Deconstruct targets artifacts and goes infinite, just like Terashi's Grasp did in the Worldfire version. I don't know if we have an alternative sorcery to create only one specific color?
Second, with Worldpurge bouncing the Mox Emerald to hand instead of exiling it we can use Show and Tell to put it back into play and then resolve a Spellweaver Voluted Retract to bounce it again. This gets us two green out of the Acorn Harvest cast and we can use the second for an extra Chatter of the Squirrel to go infinite. So we can't use Show and Tell and presumably require an extra card for the start.
In regards to cutting cards: We need to make sure Metallurgeon stays required to repeat both of the possible transitions. If a card like Mana Echoes gives us massive amounts of colorless mana to use with I think necessity would go away. Otherwise we could keep using Core Prowler to get energy counters for Whirler Virtuoso, but I don't see a way to turn nondescript tokens into progress that doesn't make Metallurgeon superfluous.
I agree that Worldpurge would allow us to use mana stages. I'm not sure if that benefit is more likely to be achieved by Worldpurge or by Worldfire without Evacuation.
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Anyway slight modification to the start: use the extra Drake Familiar tokens to bounce Opalescence and then the original Omniscience. Replay the Opalescence before the next step, but now we have Omniscience in hand. Yay.
Then we continue from where we left off. Instead of listing all the cards we draw, I'll count them as they come up.
Play March of the Machines(1). Play Vedalken Orrery(2). In response to the Dual Nature triggers play Mirror of Fate(3). In response to the Dual Nature triggers play Retract(4). We pick up Orrery, Mirror and Sands of Delirium. Then we resolve triggers to get 8 Mirror tokens and 8 Orerry tokens. Replay Omniscience resolve all but one Dual Nature trigger. Replay Orrery, Mirror and Sands, getting all the tokens. Cast Marshaling the Troops(5), tapping all creatures, except for 2 Sands, 1 Mirror.
We gain a bunch of life. The exact number doesn't matter and can surely be increased at no cost by some cards we have in the hand, but not considered yet (i.e. play random creatures now). it should be well over 100, and after converting it to colorless via Channels effect, I'm just going to assume I have enough colorless from now on.
Cast Allay(6) with buyback to destroy March of the Machines. Tap a Sand to mill more cards: Volcanic Island, Flash of Defiance x2, Worldfire, Bloodbond March, Cowardice, Psychic Battle, Cephalid Shrine.
Play Titania, Protector of Argoth(7), return the Volcanic to the battlefield and tap it for blue. Leave two Dual Nature trigger for Titania on the stack.
Play Spellweaver Helix(8). Have one Helix exile Replenish and Flash of Defiance, another exile Worldfire and Flash of Defiance.
activate Sands and Mirror, but leave the activations on the stack.
Cast Flash of Defiance(9). Two Helixes trigger. Resolve the Replenish first. Put all the enchantments onto the battlefield. Volute enchants Words of Wisdom I guess.
Use buybacked Allay to get a second Opalescence and kill Volute.
Cast Wormfang Behemoth(10). In Response cast Evacuation(11) and return the entire battlefield except for lands to our hand. The Behemoth resolves exiling our hand. Resolve Worldfire. Behemoth gets exiled, Volute gets exiled, lands get exiled, some instants/sorceries in the graveyards might get exiled.
Behemoth returns our hand from exile. We resolve the mirror activation and put Volcanic Island, Saltcrusted Steppe and more stuff (?) into the library. We resolve the sands activation and put that stuff in the graveyard. We get the Titania tokens and return our lands to the battlefield. Tap the volcanic for the second blue. We resolve the final dual Nature trigger to get an Omniscience copy.
We can repopulate the board with our enchantments and artifacts by casting them from hand and using a bunch of colorless mana for buybacked Allays.
this is good enough to cast Reality Spasm(12). Other cards we need for stages are Mimic Vat(13), Horobi, Death's Wail(14), Core Prowler(15) to generate mana and then some actual stage creatures. (Am I missing something?).
The Wormfang Behemoth and Spellweaver Volute ended up in exile. The Volute can be recovered with Replenish. To use that without extra card draws we need to be able to flashback Flash of Defiance, so to produce red I think Goblin Gardener has to be one of the cards we have drawn in the 20. Eventually we will need the Volute to cast Words of Wisdom again and trigger the next card draw.
I think we can only recover the Behemoth after more card draw, so no hyperhyperstage at this point. I was not able to rescue this cute fishy because the original eatsour hand when he enters the battlefield. If we react to the exile hand trigger to bounce it, then we lose our hand when the trigger resolves and never get it back. If we let the trigger resolve we need to trigger the bounce via flashback since our hand will be empty (duh). That looks too expensive.
But it looks like a hyperstage is actually possible right now.
EDIT: For reference, the decklist I'm working with right now:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Drake Familiar
13 Sands of Delirium
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Fountain of Youth
25 Fountain of Youth
26 Fountain of Youth
28 Wormfang Behemoth
29 Marshaling the Troops
30 Worldfire
31 Flash of Defiance
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Flash of Defiance
34 Spellweaver Helix
35 Titania, Protector of Argoth
36 Volcanic Island
37 Goblin Gardener
38 Mad Auntie
39 Facevaulter
40 Basal Thrull
41 Thrull Champion
42 Godtoucher
43 Everglove Courier
44 Nectar Faerie
45 Ghosthelm Courier
46 Possessed Aven
48 Maze Glider
49 Possessed Centaur
50 Eastern Paladin
51 Frightshroud Courier
52 Dwarven Warriors
53 Possessed Barbarian
54 Minion of Tevesh Szat
55 Reality Spasm
56 Consecrated Sphinx
57 Words of Wisdom
58 Channel
59 Replenish
60 Black Lotus
So how do we get the hyperstage?
To flash back Flash of Defiance and recover the Spellweaver Volute, we also need some life, so I guess the three Fountain of Youths should also be among the cards drawn. (We need those for the hyperstage anyway. That leaves 1 card for Metallurgeon.
To generate red mana via Goblin Gardener, we first create as many Psychic Battles as our colorless allows. Then we cast Reality Spasm and use psychic battle triggers from that alternately to kill gardener tokens and to bounce Titanias. occasionally we can also bounce the originial gardener if we need new tokens.
Along the way we should also kill the Metallurgeon and put it under a Mimic Vat. That Vat should then be the final target of reality spasm for an untap and a bonus token. Twice we should tap Volcanic Island for blue instead of red so we can cast our next Reality Spasm later.
Get life for the first flash of defiance via Fountains. After that generate more life via Marshaling the Troops. No need for Worldfires here, just go through hyperstages until you run out of red.
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cut Retract and 3x Fountain of Youth
add Dryad Arbor, Gerrard's Verdict and Izzet Guildmage.
We would also need to switch to green mana for the hyperhyperstage. So we switch the flashback spells and use Goblin Gardener as connection from the stages. Without retract we can't use Mox Sapphire for blue mana generation anymore and the colors are difficult anyway, so go to 2 storage lands.
That complicates the start, without retract and mana artifacts for some easy initial mana, but saving a card should be worth it.
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I used all of the suggested changes, most importantly Mana Crypt and Mox Sapphire.
Mox Sapphire, Mana Crypt, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Opalescence, Dual Nature, Wheel of Fortune.
1. Wheel draw:
Retract, March of the Machines, Perpetual Timepiece, Cowardize, Allay, Spellweaver Helix, Flash of Defiance.
play the first 5 cards in order, allay targeting the March of the Machines to bounce it. Activate the timepieces to mill 6 cards:
Flash of Defiance, Saltcrusted Steppe, Undiscovered Paradise, World at War, Evacuation, Worldfire
play Helix, imprinting Wheel of Fortune and Flash of Defiance, Cast Flash of Defiance.
2. Wheel draw:
Spellweaver Volute, Copy Enchantment, Vedalken Orrery, Mirror of Fate, Flash of Defiance, Psychic Battle, Titania, Protector of Argoth.
play spellweaver Volute, enchanting Allay.
Play Copy Enchantment as copy enchantment. One token copies Volute, enchanting Retract, the other token copies Dual Nature.
Play March of the Machines.
Play Mirror of Fate.
Play Psychic Battle.
Play Vedalken Orrery.
Play Flash of Defiance. Volutes and helix trigger. Resolve the Allay volute first, then Wheel, last Retract.
Allay targets March of the Machines to bounce it. 4 psychic battle trigger also happen. they all get redirected to copy enchantment, which gets bounced and replayed with token copies copying Dual Nature. That leaves us with 64 Dual Natures on the battlefield.
Volute gets reenchanted on Evactuation.
Resolve the Helix trigger. With the Wheel copy on the stack crack 2 Mirror tokens to first exile the library and then put the seven cards you want to draw next back in. resolve the wheel.
before retract play mox saphire and mana crypt again and tap them for mana. Resolve retract.
3. Wheel draw:
Allay, Reality Spasm, Horobi, Death's Wail, Core Prowler, Precursor Golem, Drake Familiar, Bloodbond March.
Replay Vedalken Orrery.
Play Drake Familiar, bouncing and replaying Copy enchantment with each token. We get 2^70 Dual Natures.
Play Precursor Golem.
Play Core Prowler.
Play Titania, Protector of Argoth. Tap the Saltcrusted Step for a storage counter.
Play Mox Saphire and Mana Crypt, tap for mana. (2 blue, 3 colorless)
Cast reality spasm, targeting the original precursor golem for x=1 (2 colorless mana remain).
Get 2^70 precursor golem trigger and 4 psychic battle triggers and some cowardize on the original golem.
first use the psychic battles to go up to 2^73 dual Natures and as many Psychic Battles. Replay the Precursor golem after bounce
first precursor trigger reswolves, causing 2^147 psychic battles to trigger.
use each to kill a core prowler token or bounce and replay the original prowler when you run out. Proliferate for storage counter.
convert those counter into mana and use allay to increase the number of dual natures and Psychic Battle, to roughly 2^2^147 each. replay the bounced precursor golem.
Repeat for the other 69 precursor trigger to get ~2^^75 Dual Natures, Psychic Battles and green/white mana.
After that we can put our choice of the exiled/in graveyard cards into the library using refreshed token copies of Perpetual Timepiece and Mirror of Fate. Then use the 1 red mana from Undiscovered Paradise to flashback a Flash of Defiance and cast a Wheel via a newly prepared Spellweaver Helix. While at it use another Helix to cast a Divine Congregation to gain some life.
4. Wheel draw:
Reality Spasm, Mimic Vat, Krark-Clan Stoker, Mad Auntie, Cephalid Shrine, Metallurgeon, Copper Gnomes.
Those cards should be enough to get tons of red mana and there is nothing stopping us from casting more wheels except for the opponents library.
5. Wheel draw:
Fountain of Youth, Fountain of Youth, Fountain of Youth, Wormfang Behemoth, Godtoucher, Everglove Courier, Reality Spasm.
6. Wheel draw:
Eastern Paladin, Frightshroud Courier, Dwarven Warriors, Possessed Barbarian, Disciple of Tevesh Szat, Kithkin Mourncaller, Reality Spasm.
7. Wheel draw:
Nectar Faerie, Ghosthelm Courier, Possessed Aven, Centaur Archer, Maze Glider, Possessed Centaur, Reality Spasm.
I hope I didn't miss any card that we need to draw. Or missed any card that got into the graveyard after using it the first time and now needs to be redrawn. Or anything else. But by drawing Reality Spasm one or two times less we could compensate for small mistakes along those lines, so I figure a start should be possible unless I missed something major.
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Pretty sure that doesn't work. We can gain an extra life in the lower hyperstage by resolving Retract while leaving Cursebreaker on the stack. Then put a Fountain of Youth activation on the stack before casting the Worldfire and using the life that gives to cast another Retract before resolving the Worldfire. Then resolve the life gain stuff on the stack.
That seems like a great idea. Since Worldfire prevents using Spellweaver Volute with Retract after it we can actually still use Show and Tell for the start, which makes things a lot easier. We can also keep some mana through the Worldfire resolution, so a Copper Gnomes activation would be enough to put Vedalken Orrery into play, after which we can just cast the Omniscience.
The only problem would be to get cards like Horobi, Death's Wail into our hand to hide them from the Worldfire. That seems solvable by just adding a Evacuation. Being able to bounce creatures any time seems dangerous, but I think as lonk as we stick to tap-the-token stages it should be fine, since it also destroys the tokens. To take advantage of the Bloodbond March layer it gives we would need the corresponding token, which we can only have after a bounce if the creature was imprinted on a Mimic Vat. But then it isn't on the battlefield and can't be bounced in the first place.
Soooo, putting stuff together:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Drake Familiar
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Dreadship Reef
18 Saltcrusted Steppe
19 Core Prowler
20 Metallurgeon
21 Acorn Harvest
22 Battle Cry
23 Retract
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Fountain of Youth
26 Fountain of Youth
27 Fountain of Youth
29 Wormfang Behemoth
30 Copper Gnomes
31 Divine Congregation
32 Worldfire
33 Flash of Defiance
34 Flash of Defiance
35 Flash of Defiance
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Titania, Protector of Argoth
38 Mountain
39 Krark-Clan Stoker
40 Mad Auntie
41 Godtoucher
42 Everglove Courier
43 Nectar Faerie
44 Ghosthelm Courier
45 Possessed Aven
46 Centaur Archer
47 Maze Glider
49 Eastern Paladin
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Dwarven Warriors
52 Possessed Barbarian
53 Disciple of Tevesh Szat
54 Reality Spasm
55 Precursor Golem
56 Military Intelligence
57 World at War
58 Show and Tell
59 Black Lotus
60 Wheel of Fortune