Presumably Rebuild would bounce Vedalken Orrery often enough to replay it and get Dual Nature triggers if we need them. In an infinite loop we are not likely to need another hyperstage transition further up the stack. Most likely we could also get away with recasting it at sorcery speed if the infinite loop doesn't need to keep stuff on the stack. I have no hope for the Orrery requiring actual artifact targeting.
Whoops, I guess I didn't save. Should be visible now.
The issue with Vedalken Orrery was what to do when we set up the hyperstage, or more generally when we transition upwards from a lower stage to a higher stage, so we don't cast Rebuild in between. But, bouncing Vedalken Orrery without having March of the Machines in play should do the trick.
That Hyperstage section is looking good. Since I already know how the hyperstage works I can't really comment on how understandable it is. I did however notice some stuff, so here goes:
That the stages can only refresh ressources in one direction kinda came out of nowhere. More discussion for that or moving that part below the 'no infinite' discussion might help.
Maybe add some discussion over the use of Mox Emerald. i.e. we can't retrieve it if it ever dies and it dies if it ever is animated by March of the Machines, so no Dual Nature tokens.
You didn't mention that Rebuild bouncing Mimic Vat is important to prevent another infinite. (If we used something like Evacuation instead we could imprint a Metallurgeon in the higher stage and activate the Vat in the lower stage to gain an extra hasty token there, going infinite.)
Nowhere in the explanation do we actually use up the green mana, so in the end saying that the next thing coming up refreshes green mana feels jarring. When we actually go through the combo we will spend the green by not resolving rebuild in transitions where we would not be able to get new hasty Metallurgeon tokens under it because all the stages below are used up.
The representation of the stack is very hard to read through and understand. I'd suggest some graphical representation. I put together a sketch of what I'm imagining: Stack for the Ultracombo. Probably using subsections of that structure as relevant to the article section.
Remember when I posted a deck that was half life gain spells that I made by myself here? Well, that deck sucked. What I really needed was a deck that's half Planeswalkers! After the encouragement you gave me last time figured you'd like to see my latest version of my deck.
If anyone wants to avoid Dominaria Spoilers until after the Prerelease come back tomorrow. This deck has 3 cards from it.
Because of how long the write up of the deck is I put it a spoiler tab so it wouldn't take up half the page.
This deck starts with Black Lotus into Show and Tell for Omniscience AKA the “It’s Turn 1 and I don’t have to care about mana!” combo. It’s a theorycraft staple because of how few cards it uses for such an insane effect. The opponent gets to play a land with Show and Tell which will suck much later.
Cards 4-7 – Draw the Deck
To draw a card we summon Selvala's Enforcer. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker can clone any Non-Legendary creature. Doubling Season doubles tokens and counters, like Kiki-Jiki’s clones. We can tap Kiki-Jiki to get two more Selvala's Enforcer and therefore draws. Paradox Engine untaps everything when we play any card. With the next card, the results are hilarious.
Card 8 – The Core Combo
Now we cast Opalescence to make it so enchantments, like Doubling Season, are creatures which makes them able to be cloned by Kiki-Jiki. Cloning Doubling Season is the core of the deck’s insanity because everything gets multiplied by Doubling Season, something else that gets multiplied by Doubling Season, or both. With the number of Doubling Seasons we’re getting, multiplied feels way more accurate than doubled. (You can calculate what you multiply by with 2^X where X is the number of Doubling Seasons, but due to how insane exponents get, you won’t be able to for long.)
That said, we don’t want to go nuts yet. Clone Doubling Season once with Kiki-Jiki, then we clone Selvala's Enforcer with the next six uses of Kiki-Jiki to draw everything we need to draw. (7 in Starting Hand + 1 from the original enforcer + 2 from the first cloning + 8x6 for the other clonings = 58 cards drawn. We never need to draw the last two.) After that, back to Doubling Season.
Card 9-11 – One Rings to Rule Them All
Cryptolith Rite is the less broken version of a card in the Infinite Squirrel Combo and our source of mana in this deck. With the number of Doubling Seasons we have, it’s pretty easy to understand why. You may be thinking that creatures need Haste to tap for mana the turn they’re summoned, but guess what Kiki-Jiki clones have. Because we can gain more mana than we can spend.
We need mana for three cards, the first of which is Rings of Brighthearth. With it we can copy active abilities like Kiki-Jiki’s. With March of the Machines, we can also clone Rings of Brighthearth. The most efficient way to use Kiki-Jiki is to have it so that every use of his ability clones Doubling Season except the last one, which targets Rings of Brighthearth instead.
Note about how Rings of Brighthearth works: You don’t have to pay the 2 Mana until the ability resolves, so if you don’t have enough mana for all of them you can pay for as many as you can then tap new creatures to pay for the rest.
Cards 12-15 – Mimic Vat
Riku of Two Reflections is another use of mana and he’s summoned now because we really need to summon him before playing the next cards. When you summon any creature or cast any sorcery use his abilities to copy them.
The Legend Rule sucks. Get rid of it with Mirror Gallery.
Mimic Vat is the last card we need mana for. With Riku we can make just enough of them without using Kiki-Jiki. With the second to last use of Kiki-Jiki's cloning, clone Mimic Vat We want to imprint everything onto them, so tap every nontoken, and every token that you don’t need and cast, then copy with Riku, Righteous Fury. (By that I mean sacrifice everything except the Mimic Vats we’ll use and each copy of Rings of Brighthearth. Life is way more valuable than the tokens, Rings of Brighthearth is needed to keep our progress and is more valuable than Doubling Season because it lets us instantly get them back, and imprinting everything onto Mimic Vats means we’ll everything back.) Now you can activate the Mimic Vats for more Kiki-Jikis and Paradox Engines. (and the other stuff just to have more stuff and because you’ll get your mana back.) Needles to say, use Rings of Brighthearth on the Mimic Vats when you use them.
Leave the original Righteous Fury on the stack when you summon the next card. (It has Flash.)
To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:
1: Activate the Mimic Vats of Doubling Season then Rings of Brighthearth.
2: Tap each Kiki-Jiki one at a time to clone Doubling Season and Rings of Brighthearth.
3: Activate Kiki-Jiki’s Mimic Vat and repeat step 2.
4: Activate the Mimic Vat of Paradox Engine and everything else except Selvala's Enforcer.
Do not do anything else until the last Paradox Engine Trigger resolves.
Card 16 – Using Life as a Resource
We need to trigger Paradox Engine as many times as possible, so we summon Wydwen, the Biting Gale and pay one life to unsummon her. We can repetitively unsummon and resummon her using all but one of our life, (Using all but one of your life Unsummoning and Resummoning Wydwen will be called the Wydwen Dance from now on.) and we just gained a lot of life with Righteous Fury.
Now tap everything expendable and Righteous Fury resolve. (Everything except the original Wydwen, Mimic Vats that we’ll use, and each Rings of Brighthearth is expendable.) and do the Wyden Dance.
Cards 17-19, 21, & 23-60 – Setup
Dump all of these cards onto the table. They’re set up for later and will be explained when they’re used, but there’s still some things you need to know about them now.
Oath of Teferi has a non-optional exile enter the battlefield ability, you’ll get the exiled thing back, but not until it doesn’t matter anymore, so have all of the Oaths target the same expendable thing.
Kheru Spellsnatcher needs to be summoned face down in order for it to do anything. It is not expendable while face down.
When you have more than one of the same Planeswalker, Mirror Gallery is not expendable.
The last card you need notes about is Soul Echo. Even if X is 0, it’s not sacrificed until its controller’s next upkeep, AKA, when we don’t care anymore. Thankfully, Riku clones it because we want one for ourselves and we need to give one to the opponent. We want one because it lets us do the Wydwen Dance down to 0 life instead of 1. (Despite that it’s still expendable because the only times it would leave the battlefield are when you’re gaining life.) We want to give the opponent one because bashing their atoms into nonexistence is part of the combo.
Melek, Izzet Paragon lets us cast Sorceries, which we never drew, from our library. (His other ability is ironically mostly unimportant and does not make Swarm Intelligence redundant.) We start with giving the Harmless Offering of Soul Echo.
Card 20 & 15 – Life Gain
Cast Archangel's Light from the Library to shuffle your graveyard back into your library and gain two life for each card shuffled. It will get copied by Melek and Riku. This may seem like a bit of an overkill use for such a bad card when there’s just Righteous Fury, but it’s worth it. After a copy resolves we do the Wydwen Dance, cast Righteous Fury sacrificing every expendable thing, (Everything but the original Wydwen, Mimic Vats that we’ll use, and each Rings of Brighthearth is expendable. Soul Echo is expendable because we’ll have more by the time we’re back to 0 life.) and do the Wydwen Dance between Righteous Furies.
Even though we got the Show and Tell from the beginning back and it looks like a free Paradox Engine trigger, do not cast it. You really don’t want the opponent to get any more lands from it. Harmless Offering on the other hand, is a free Paradox Engine trigger, especially if you target something that’s going to die before the offering resolves.
Card 21 – Let’s do it again! (An Incomprehensible Number More Times!)
When we're down to just the original Archangel's Light on the stack, pay Kheru Spellsnatcher’s morph cost to turn it face up it to counter Archangel's Light which we recast. After recasting Archangel's Light you can let Kheru Spellsnatcher die to Righteous Fury then draw it with Selvala's Enforcer after Archangel's Light shuffles it back in and you can do all of that again, but you need to be careful not to mill yourself. If this is the first time doing this step, don’t draw yet.
This may sound like an infinite combo, but the reason it isn't is because Selvala's Enforcer makes both players draw a card and Melek only lets you play instants and sorceries from your library. Your opponent's library is limited. Everything is a resource, even our enemy.
Card 22– Calling for Backup
Teferi, Temporal Archmage needs to enter the battlefield when there’s only one Doubling Season. This means that right after the last Righteous Fury we do things differently. First, we do NOT do the Wyden dance until the rest of this step is done. We activate Doubling Season’s Mimic Vat, let it make one Doubling Season, then and play all of these cards while the rest of Mimic Vat’s triggers are on the stack. (You can do all the Paradox Engine stuff, but you have to only clone Rings of Brighthearth and don’t use Doubling Season’s Mimic Vat. It sucks...)
Use Teferi’s -10 We’ll need that Emblem later and we can get Teferi back, so it’s better to let him peace out to the graveyard than have loyalty and stay. We want Teferi back, so now we activate Selvala's Enforcer’s Mimic Vat to draw Teferi and Kheru Spellsnatcher. When summoning Teferi later we can have more Doubling Seasons.
Domri Rade and Garruk Relentless/Garruk the Veil-Cursed will be talked about in the next section.
23-37 – Say Hello to my Little (Super) Friends!
When the opponent is out of cards in their library and we’re down to just the original Archangel's use Domri Rade’s +1 to “draw” Kheru Spellsnatcher and copy that ability with each Rings of Brighthearth then when we’re down to just the original Archangel's Light on the stack again we can do it again thanks to Oath of Teferi. (That card effectively doubles the number of Planeswalkers in this deck.) We can “draw” Kheru Spellsnatcher with the rest of the Planeswalkers we have duplicates of. (Liliana, the Last Hope "draws" from the graveyard.)
From now on these cards will be called the Lesser Walkers.
Before moving on to the next step you can have the Mirror Galleries die to have the Legend Rule make you sacrifice the Lesser Walkers. Archangel’s Light will shuffle them back into your library.
Note: Oath of Teferi does not go infinite because no matter how many you have, it still only lets you use Planeswalker Abilities twice. It also don’t go infinite from bouncing Planeswalkers because they return during the end step, which is past when we can deal damage.
Cards 30-55 & 22 – (Super) Friends of my (Super) Friends
Note: From what I can tell, this is every Planeswalker that can go in the deck that can draw and doesn’t go infinite. (Nissa, Vital Force “draws” from the graveyard.) I know that this deck list isn’t the final version. Partly because I always think I’m done and find something else, but mostly because there will be more Planeswalkers that fit into this deck in the future.
After using each of the Lesser Walkers, we use Teferi, Temporal Archmage’s +1 to “draw” a Lesser Walker and copy that “draw” with each Rings of Brighthearth. We then use Lesser Walkers each time we draw them, then after the final draw we do it again with the second use of Teferi, Temporal Archmage’s +1. We repeat this process with the next Planeswalker and then the next one until we’re out of Planeswalkers.
With Karn, Scion of Urza you have to keep cards in your hand to be able to use his +1 without exiling anything.
Jace, Architect of Thought and Jace, the Mind Sculptor need at least three cards in the library to draw two or not kill you respectively. (With Architect of Thought the rules of the challenge say that if the opponent gets to make any choices they will make the choice that’s worst for you.)
For Jace, the Living Guildpact let the final Archangel's Light resolve. Jace’s -10 is a meaner version of the Power Nine card Timetwister, so not only does it make you draw seven, but it also resets your opponent’s deck to 59 cards (They don’t shuffle back the land they got from Show and Tell) which lets you draw with Selvala’s Enforcer again. The seven drawn should have seven of the Spell Snatcher Snatchers for a total of 66 uses of their abilities per Jace’s -10. To draw them activate Selvala's Enforcer’s Mimic Vat three times without any Doubling Seasons and seven times while there’s only three Doubling Seasons.
Card 56 – Murder Time!
Right before the last Jace Timetwister resolves, use Garruk, Apex Predator to kill Jace, the Living Guildpact so he get shuffled back into the library. Resummon and reuse Jace. When it’s down to the last timetwister again, use the second use of Garruk to kill him again.
When this step is over make sure we have Archangel's Light exiled. Now, we not get to move to the next phase
Cards 57-59 – Near Endless Combat
Attack with one Brago, King Eternal, every Scourge of the Throne, and every expendable thing you want to get untapped by Scourge of the Throne's Attack Trigger. Before combat damage is dealt cast Archangel's Light and make sure everything attacking except Brago dies. (Scourge of the Throne only makes extra combat phases if the opponent has the highest health or is tied, so we want to deal as little damage as possible to get the most Brago triggers as possible before going all out.) Use Brago’s trigger to flicker every nontoken and use the Planeswalkers again and do everything that goes with it, then move to the next combat phase and do this again until the opponent is down to zero life. Soul Echo keeps the opponent alive. And because of our Soul Echo they’re tied for the highest health which means one more chance to make more Combat Phases.
With both us and the opponent at 0 Life this is the final time we can add combat phases, so we start going all out. Attack with Brago, every Scourge of the Throne, and every Rings of Brighthearth.
Soul Echo’s only purpose in this deck is overkill. It lets the opponent live so we can destroy them with each extra combat phases created by the Scourge of the Throne army.
In the end we do this with each layer below the top one growing as the combos plays out. The lower layers have higher priority.
For each Combat Phase attack with Brago amount of damage and flicker every Planeswalker.
For each Planeswalker we draw a Spell Snatcher Snatchers for each Rings of Brighthearth.
For Each Spell Snatcher Snatchers we draw Kheru Spellsnatcher for each Rings of Brighthearth.
For each Kheru Spellsnatcher recast Archangel's Light which gets copied by each Swarm Intelligence.
For each Archangel's Light cast Righteous Fury which get copied by each Swarm Intelligence.
For each life gained unsummon and resummon Wydwen to trigger each Paradox Engine.
For each Paradox Engine trigger do The Thing.
The Thing:
1: Activate the Mimic Vats of Doubling Season then Rings of Brighthearth.
2: Tap each Kiki-Jiki one at a time to clone Doubling Season and Rings of Brighthearth.
3: Activate Kiki-Jiki’s Mimic Vat and repeat step 2.
4: Activate the Mimic Vat of Paradox Engine and everything else except Selvala's Enforcer.
The Finale
When the final combat phase begins, we do the combo as usual even though we can’t attack with anything more, but when the last of Garruk, Apex Predator’s murders target Ajani, Mentor of Heroes instead. With Ajani we can put three +1/+1 counters on a creatures and those counters get multiplied by Doubling Season.
The amount of damage is impossible to over exaggerate.
Although the combo is done, we still haven’t won. Technically winning is optional because the challenge doesn’t say you have to win. You can concede now and still have it count, but if you really want to win, you can wait for the opponent’s Soul Echo to be sacrificed during their upkeep.
I want to know how good this deck is, but I'm having two problems with figuring that out. First, after reading what layers and stages are I'm not entirely sure what level this deck reaches. I know that everything with Paradox Engine is a Stage, but I'm not entirely sure if the Life Gain, Planeswalkers, or Combat make a Hyperstage. I don't think so though... The other problem is I don't know how to calculate the damage done. If it's not to much to ask could someone give me an estimate on the damage done?
By the way, I’ve had this on mind since Silver Border Cards were temporally legal in commander, but it didn’t feel important enough to point out.
If Silver Border cards were legal then before starting a deck that goes for the highest non-infinite amount of damage, you’d want to use a deck that casts Double Dip many times as possible without infinite combos against your opponent first. (If you went infinite in that game, that would mean you’d go infinite in the actual challenge before it even starts and probably get the “honorable” record of the quickest fail in any MTG game. Congratulations!) In the best case scenario, you play that deck against every living person then use this deck in a multiplayer game against all of them. That said, multiplying that the life gain by ~7.4 Billion probably doesn’t do much, but it’s like a way nerdier version of the hypothetical question, “What would happen if everyone went to the same place and jumped at the same time?” (XKCD’s what if blog has the most accurate answer the jumping question. To adapt it for this situation make everyone stand in way that spells overkill.)
If for some reason the rules say that you can’t do infinites in the actual game, but ignores the Potential Loophole of Infinite Unglued Double Cards in the previous game, then you could just make a deck that casts infinite Double Deals and use your Cat Tribal Deck or whatever else you want in the actual game. It’s extremely unlikely that the loophole exists, (especially since there was never a loophole for Infinity Elemental) but I thought I’d point out that idea anyway.
Off Topic Right After Posting This Edit: This site lets you post ~20,000 Character posts? 0_o I thought I'd have to double post to get this post through.
Edit: Fixed the Mistakes. The Mimic Vat mistake happened because I got used to everything having haste, so I forgot that Riku doesn't grant haste. I don't know how the Jace mistake happened because I was careful to check for that kind of thing which is why ether Kiora isn't in. Thanks Deedlit!
I don't see how you can tap the Mimic Vats, since they will be creatures with March of the Machines on the battlefield. We can't destroy the March of the Machines cards using Righteous Fury since we can't tap March of the Machines.
I think Jace, Architect of Thought goes infinite. You can cast it with one Doubling Season on the battlefield, so that it gets 8 counters. Then, activate the ultimate ability, destroying it, and copy the ability many times with Rings of Brighthearth. Use Archangel's Light to shuffle Jace into the library, and use one of the ability copies to redraw Jace, along with many other cards like Kheru Spellsnatcher
Similarly, Jace, the Mind Scupltor goes infinite; cast it with two Doubling Seasons on the battlefield, then use the +0 and +12 loyalty abilities.
Assuming these problems are fixed, I get the following for the numbers:
Each Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker abiilty can copy a Doubling Season, taking X Doubling Seasons to 2^X Doubling Seasons.
Each time you tap Kiki-Jiki with X Rings of Brighthearth, we get X copies of the ability, taking X to 2^^X.
Each time we create a copy of Kiki-Jiki with X Doubling Seasons, we get 2^X Kiki-Jikis, taking X to 2^^^(2^X).
Each time we tap a Mimic Vat imprinted with Kiki-Jiki with X Rings, we take X to 2^^^^X.
Each time we cast a spell with X Paradox Engines, we can untap the Mimic Vats X times, taking X to 2^^^^^X.
Each time we gain X life, we can do the Wydwen dance X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^X.
Each time we cast Righteous Fury, with X Rikus/Meleks, we get X copies, taking X to 2^^^^^^^X.
Each time we cast Archangel's Light with X Rikus, we can reshuffle in Righteous Fury X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate a Lesser Walker with X Rings, we can retrieve Kheru Spellsnatcher X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate a Greater Walker with X Rings, we can draw a Lesser Walker X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate Garruk, Apex Predator with X Rings, we can destroy a Greater Walker X times and retrieve it, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we have a combat phase, we can attack with X Bragos, flickering Garruk X times and taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^^^X.
So, first you attack with Brago 9 times, allowing 18 activations of Garruk, Apex Predator and generating about 2^^^^^^^^^^^^20. Then, we attack with 2^^^^^^^^^^^^20 Scourge of the Thrones, getting that many combat phases. So the final damage will be about 2^^^^^^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^^^^^^^20) (13 and 12 arrows respectively).
Concerning your loophole - is a Vintage game modifiable by a previously played Unglued game? If that were to be allowable, then I suppose one could further argue that we don't even need the modifying game to be an official M:tG game - we could just make up a game that says that in your next Magic game you start out with Rayo's number of life. Perhaps I should add another rule saying we are just playing a standard game starting fresh, unmodified by anything happening prior (This would eliminate someone's idea to use one of the Karns to restart the game with cards already in play.).
This is a fascinating discussion. I thought I was doing pretty well with a deck that doubles the number of 1/1 tokens each turn and then plays 4 Coat of Arms, 4 Copy Artifact, and 4 Craterhoof Behemoths, for about 10^114 damage after 40 turns of doubling. The stuff above is insane, though. Does that end up being larger than Graham's Number?
@tchntm43 Glad you found it interesting! Yes, the damage is much larger than Graham's number. Graham's number is less than F_{w + 1}(64), while our damage winds up being more than F_{w^3 + w13 + 3} (3^^^3^^^3^^^3^^^3^^^(3^^3^^3^^(3^3^3^3^(2*3^61)))). The article tries to explain the fast-growing hierarchy, and give some intuition about the sizes of the numbers; I'm not sure how much it succeeded in that. The important thing to look at is the ordinal subscript. Graham's number has subscript w + 1, while our number has subscript w^3 + w13 + 3, so our number goes through much more recursion and is much larger.
Question: Could Mana Reflection and Gaea's Cradle play a role in a high damage total like this? I'm thinking, if you have Opalescence again so that Mana Reflection is a creature, and you can make a bazillion copies of Mana Reflection... Each Mana Reflection is a doubling effect and they do stack. Like, if you have Opalescence and 3 Mana Reflections, a Gaea's Cradle would already tap for 32 G. SO I guess you would start with Deedlit11's deck to incorporate the method of producing duplicate Dual Natures, but instead make the copies be Mana Reflection... and then end with a burn spell I guess. Not sure there is a more efficient way to deal damage with some ridiculously large value of X colorless.
I haven't put much thought into this, but I would be curious to see just how much mana could be produced using Mana Reflection + Gaea's Cradle.
A link to the document describing this was posted to /r/math, and a few people noticed that in the writeup, a spellweaver volute is trying to enchant allay very early on, but the allay wasn't in the graveyard. Allay was targeting a copy enchantment that was copying dual nature. Cowardice will bounce the copy enchantment, with allay on the stack. This triggers the dual nature, exiling all the other dual natures. We move on, leaving all these on the stack, but this also leaves the allay on the stack.
Someone who has spent more time looking at this should see if this is actually a problem or not.
If it is a problem, I think a simple counterspell will solve it, countering the allay that is under the triggers will put it into the graveyard where it belongs.
@tchntm43: Mana Reflection was in fact used in previous entries to this contest. However, in the latest versions, we need to keep a delicate balance between mana gained and mana spent; so for example, in the current deck, each green mana we spend will eventually allow us to tap a Forest for one green mana. Any more green mana, and the combo goes infinite.
@nerdyjoe: Thanks for the heads up! That particular section was written for an older version of the deck, so it needs to be rewritten; the start is quite different now. But yes, for that older start, that does seem to be a problem. It was just a case of me being greedy and using Copy Enchantment to copy Dual Nature for some extra copies of Dual Nature, rather than just have it copy nothing so that we can clear the stack and let Allay go to the graveyard. We do have a card that counters spells (Cephalid Shrine), but we have a limited number of cards in our early draws, so putting in Cephalid Shrine would likely cost us an early exponent. I think the best thing to do is simply not have that first Copy Enchantment copy Dual Nature; this leads to 4 and then 8 Dual Natures, rather than 6 and then 10, and we eventually wind up with F_3 (2^2^2^4108) rather than F_3 (2^2^2^40,494).
Hey, all. I just wanted to let you guys know that your original article inspired me to try a similar challenge in the standard format, relaxing the turn-1 requirement but nothing else. I got up to 9 layers in my current version, and I'm in the process of writing up one that beats Graham's Number now. I thought you might be interested to see it!
Woah... Very nice, Stakfish! I haven't had the chance yet to look through your article, but assuming it works, it's the largest number I've seen coming from the Standard format. And there are only a couple ways that we know of for replicating the Ackermann function, even in Vintage, so if you can beat Graham's Number in Standard, that would really be impressive!
Wow! Stakfish, that was a great read. A lot more fun stuff going on there than I would have expected out of standard. Looks like you did a fantastic job putting the deck together.
Interestingly, even when you don't limit yourself to going off in a single, somewhat early turn you still wouldn't go infinite since the opponent should deck by turn 54. (Assuming a 60 basic lands deck for them.) So if you are fine with allowing that you could give the opponent life each turn with Ajani Unyielding, getting some repetitions of the final layer. But yeah, sitting around for all those turns feels kinda wrong.
Thanks so much! I think I also lucked out with this standard format, because Cogwork Assembler+Panharmonicon makes every creature with an ETB ability a potential layer.
I actually have a question about Ackermann combos and expressing them at the end: how do you get numbers for the Conway expression? I know each separate Ackermann combo adds another number to the chain, and each layer adds 1 to the last number in the chain, but how do you figure out what the middle numbers are?
For instance, with 6 Ackermann combos and 4 layers after them, I know it would look like 2->x->x->x->x->5, but what would the values of x be there?
I can only get one Ackermann combo in standard, my method is much less extensible, but I feel bad leaving question marks in the final damage total.
6 Ackermann combos with some additional layers would actually be a chain of length 9, since a combo with no Ackermann combos and some layers is already a chain of length 3.
The second to last number in the chain represents how many times the final layer is applied. 10->10->10->10->1->5 is just X1 = 10->10->10->10, so that's the number you have to beat initially; then 10->10->10->10->2->5 is X2 = 10->10->10->10->X1->4, and 10->10->10->10->3->5 is X3 = 10->10->10->10->X2->4, and so on; each increment of the second to last number is another application of the final layer.
That's about all the precision that we worried about. You could adjust the third to last number to get as close to your final damage as you can, so in the above you would choose 10->10->10->X->n->5 so that 10->10->10->X would be a good approximation of how much you get before repeatedly applying the final layer. But, typically X is itself very large and requires its own Conway chain, so you may want to not bother with that. In that case, just choose a "base" number for all the previous numbers - I chose 10 because that was a typical base number to use, but 3 is a rational choice as well. (Not 2, since 2->2->anything is just 4)
Gotcha, thanks: I think choosing 3 as the base and 2 as the first number works best: I only have one Ackermann combo, which gets up to a 4-chain. I can get up to 2->3->8->3 in the main phase, then use that to fuel an Ajani activation for a final layer, which with that combo would give 2->3->(2->3->8->3)->3, which if I'm not mistaken is just 2->3->3->4, correct?
I've been reading through the old posts in this thread, and while I'm not all the way through so this might be completely wrong, but I think there might be a better way to approach greater recursion.
I don't understand how your megastage works, but from reading the hyperstage description, it sounds like you guys are implementing the same set of instructions lijil described in #643. You chain together the same stage by adding 2 instructions: use the new resource L to turn all O into I, and put a dividing trigger M on the stack, and use up all I and an M on the stack to create one L. It's actually the same way I'm implementing my stage in standard, using a kind of state variable to divide an upper level from a lower one. The problem is that it's not nearly as extensible as the stage combo: I could only get one of a lower stage and it looks like you guys have managed... 2?
The problem is the delete-all-I approach to preventing infinites. If you can instead make it so that, once you've made an L, spending an I requires using up an M. That way, you can't use the I you save in the lower stage: you either have to let the lower stage resolve completely and use up an M from below IT to regenerate your stage, which is obviously limited, or you have to spend the L you just generated immediately, at which point it's too late to feed the lower stage with your I.
The best way I can see to enforce that restriction is with an imprint card like mimic Vat: if we only have one vat, generating a new untapped hasty token requires putting something on it, and the only way to put the right thing on mimic Vat to start the next stage is by using a trigger from the level below, I think we can force them to only go one way.
So, let's say you start with a stage:
1. If our nontoken creature I is on the Vat, use one I to push X PB on the stack.
2. Pop one PB off the stack to push X BM on the stack.
3. Pop one BM off the stack to produce X O.
4. Pop one PB off the stack and one BM below it to produce one I.
Then add:
5. If our L-producing creature is on the vat, Use one L to push lots of NL on the stack.
6. Pop one NL off the stack to produce X I.
7. Pop one NL off the stack and one BM below it to produce one L, and imprint our L producing creature on the vat.
8. Pop one NL off the stack to put our I-producing creature back on the vat.
That pretty clearly implements a hyperstage: we build a stack of PB- M stages, separated by NL layers, and each combination of NL/BM lets us rebuild the stage above to Grand effect.
The trick is that, if you add another linked "stage":
9. If our K-producing creature is on the vat, use one K to push X SF on the stack.
10. Pop one SF off the stack to produce X L.
11. Pop one SF off the stack and one BM below it to generate one K, and put our K-producing creature on the vat.
12. Pop one SF off the stack to put our L-producing creature on the vat.
If I'm not mistaken, this implements a megastage: each BM in the stage below a K layer produces another K layer, which in turn corresponds to another L-hyperstage.
As long as we can ensure that each new trigger type can hit itself and the next creature down to put it on the vat, but not any of the ones below it, we can keep chaining these modules together, where each module takes us from f_w^n(x) to f_w^(n+1)(x). If we can get even three such linked stages, we'll probably be able to beat the current combo (I don't see this version taking up nearly as much space as the current hyper/megastags, so more room for subsequent stages and layers). And if we can generalize it such that the old stages can link together this way, we could get up to f_w^25(x)!
Obviously, it would take a lot of retooling, and I haven't the faintest idea how to force Mimic Vat's imprinting to match whatever resource we're consuming, but it seems worth exploring at the very least.
It's great to have another mind working on the Vintage challenge!
That's a really great idea. Having to eliminate all of a particular resource was very limiting; Worldpurge was pretty much the only usable card that could eliminate mana, and Worldfire was one of very few cards that could eliminate all extra life. So if we can get implement this new idea, it should really blow the barn door off the combo.
That said, I'm very unsure of the details as well. Paging Iijil...
EDIT: Here's one issue. In the old way of doing things, we would have a lot of Mimic Vats, and we would get a new creature by destroying the nontoken version and imprinting it on a new Mimic Vat. If we only have one Mimic Vat though, we would have to get the new creature by untapping the Mimic Vat. But, if the lowest level creature can do that, what's to stop it from doing so when the Mimic Vat has a higher level creature imprinted?
EDIT: I suppose we can bounce and replay the Mimic Vat instead.
EDIT: One thing I'm confused about: How is a BM trigger of an I creature supposed to produce an L, even assisted by an NL trigger?
1. If our nontoken creature I is on the Vat, use one I to push X PB on the stack.
2. Pop one PB off the stack to push X BM on the stack.
3. Pop one BM off the stack to produce X O.
4. Pop one PB off the stack and one BM below it to produce one I.
Then add:
5. If our L-producing creature is on the vat, Use one L to push lots of NL on the stack.
6. Pop one NL off the stack to produce X I.
7. Pop one NL off the stack and one BM below it to produce one L, and imprint our L producing creature on the vat.
8. Pop one NL off the stack to put our I-producing creature back on the vat.
I'm not sure this really works as a hyperstage.
Consider what happens when we have run down the topmost stage and the easy resource top offs form step 6. We now want to dip back into the second stage and get a new NL layer. so we use 7 to get an L back. That also switches the imprint to L and uses a BM of the second stage. So we use 5 to refresh the NL layer, switch back to I imprint with 8 and go through the top stage as often as we can with 6. Fine so far.
At some point the second stage runs out of BM trigger on top and we need to use 2 to refresh that first layer by using a PB from the second layer. To preserve the hyperstage structure we have to do this between 7 and 5. Still fine.
Then the second layer of the second stage runs out and we need to use 4 followed by 1 to refresh it. We still need to do this between 7 and 5 but after 7 the imprint is set to L and we can't use 1 to spent our I. This is not fine.
I don't see any simple fix for that. When we want to keep the second stage from spending I that belongs to the first stage then how can we allow the second stage to spend the I it legitimately accumulates while working as intended?
Of course the answer we currently use is to forcibly remove all first stage I. Which, as you pointed out, doesn't seem very friendly to extensions. Maybe there is a better way out there?
I can only see outdated sections. Should the hyperstage section already be there? Great to hear you are working on the write-up again.
The issue with Vedalken Orrery was what to do when we set up the hyperstage, or more generally when we transition upwards from a lower stage to a higher stage, so we don't cast Rebuild in between. But, bouncing Vedalken Orrery without having March of the Machines in play should do the trick.
Casting Battle Cry with Spellweaver Volute will also trigger Swarm Intelligence so that is an extra layer for all the stages.
That the stages can only refresh ressources in one direction kinda came out of nowhere. More discussion for that or moving that part below the 'no infinite' discussion might help.
Maybe add some discussion over the use of Mox Emerald. i.e. we can't retrieve it if it ever dies and it dies if it ever is animated by March of the Machines, so no Dual Nature tokens.
You didn't mention that Rebuild bouncing Mimic Vat is important to prevent another infinite. (If we used something like Evacuation instead we could imprint a Metallurgeon in the higher stage and activate the Vat in the lower stage to gain an extra hasty token there, going infinite.)
Nowhere in the explanation do we actually use up the green mana, so in the end saying that the next thing coming up refreshes green mana feels jarring. When we actually go through the combo we will spend the green by not resolving rebuild in transitions where we would not be able to get new hasty Metallurgeon tokens under it because all the stages below are used up.
The representation of the stack is very hard to read through and understand. I'd suggest some graphical representation. I put together a sketch of what I'm imagining: Stack for the Ultracombo. Probably using subsections of that structure as relevant to the article section.
That graphical representation is great. However, I don't know how to create such diagrams. Can I rely on you to provide the diagrams for the article?
@0evil_overlord0: Awesome!
Remember when I posted a deck that was half life gain spells that I made by myself here? Well, that deck sucked. What I really needed was a deck that's half Planeswalkers! After the encouragement you gave me last time figured you'd like to see my latest version of my deck.
If anyone wants to avoid Dominaria Spoilers until after the Prerelease come back tomorrow. This deck has 3 cards from it.
Because of how long the write up of the deck is I put it a spoiler tab so it wouldn't take up half the page.
2 Show and Tell
3 Omniscience
4 Doubling Season
5 Paradox Engine
6 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
7 Selvala's Enforcer
8 Opalescence
9 Cryptolith Rite
10 Rings of Brighthearth
11 March of the Machines
12 Riku of Two Reflections
13 Mirror Gallery
14 Mimic Vat
15 Righteous Fury
16 Wydwen, the Biting Gale
17 Oath of Teferi
18 Leyline of Anticipation
19 Melek, Izzet Paragon
20 Archangel's Light
21 Kheru Spellsnatcher
23 Domri Rade
24 Domri Rade
25 Domri Rade
26 Domri Rade
27 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
28 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
29 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
30 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
31 Ajani, Valiant Protector
32 Ajani, Valiant Protector
33 Ajani, Valiant Protector
34 Ajani, Valiant Protector
35 Liliana, the Last Hope
36 Liliana, the Last Hope
37 Liliana, the Last Hope
38 Liliana, the Last Hope
39 Nissa, Vital Force
40 Karn, Scion of Urza
41 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
42 Chandra, Pyromaster
43 Narset Transcendent
44 Nissa, Nature's Artisan
45 Jace Beleren
46 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
47 Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
48 Kaya, Ghost Assassin
49 Sarkhan Unbroken
50 Dovin Baan
51 Teferi, Timebender
52 Tamiyo, Field Researcher
53 Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver
54 Jace, Memory Adept
55 Jace, the Living Guildpact
57 Brago, King Eternal
58 Scourge of the Throne
59 Soul Echo
60 Harmless Offering
Cards 1-3 – Setup
This deck starts with Black Lotus into Show and Tell for Omniscience AKA the “It’s Turn 1 and I don’t have to care about mana!” combo. It’s a theorycraft staple because of how few cards it uses for such an insane effect. The opponent gets to play a land with Show and Tell which will suck much later.
Cards 4-7 – Draw the Deck
To draw a card we summon Selvala's Enforcer. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker can clone any Non-Legendary creature. Doubling Season doubles tokens and counters, like Kiki-Jiki’s clones. We can tap Kiki-Jiki to get two more Selvala's Enforcer and therefore draws. Paradox Engine untaps everything when we play any card. With the next card, the results are hilarious.
Card 8 – The Core Combo
Now we cast Opalescence to make it so enchantments, like Doubling Season, are creatures which makes them able to be cloned by Kiki-Jiki. Cloning Doubling Season is the core of the deck’s insanity because everything gets multiplied by Doubling Season, something else that gets multiplied by Doubling Season, or both. With the number of Doubling Seasons we’re getting, multiplied feels way more accurate than doubled. (You can calculate what you multiply by with 2^X where X is the number of Doubling Seasons, but due to how insane exponents get, you won’t be able to for long.)
That said, we don’t want to go nuts yet. Clone Doubling Season once with Kiki-Jiki, then we clone Selvala's Enforcer with the next six uses of Kiki-Jiki to draw everything we need to draw. (7 in Starting Hand + 1 from the original enforcer + 2 from the first cloning + 8x6 for the other clonings = 58 cards drawn. We never need to draw the last two.) After that, back to Doubling Season.
Card 9-11 – One Rings to Rule Them All
Cryptolith Rite is the less broken version of a card in the Infinite Squirrel Combo and our source of mana in this deck. With the number of Doubling Seasons we have, it’s pretty easy to understand why. You may be thinking that creatures need Haste to tap for mana the turn they’re summoned, but guess what Kiki-Jiki clones have. Because we can gain more mana than we can spend.
We need mana for three cards, the first of which is Rings of Brighthearth. With it we can copy active abilities like Kiki-Jiki’s. With March of the Machines, we can also clone Rings of Brighthearth. The most efficient way to use Kiki-Jiki is to have it so that every use of his ability clones Doubling Season except the last one, which targets Rings of Brighthearth instead.
Note about how Rings of Brighthearth works: You don’t have to pay the 2 Mana until the ability resolves, so if you don’t have enough mana for all of them you can pay for as many as you can then tap new creatures to pay for the rest.
Cards 12-15 – Mimic Vat
Riku of Two Reflections is another use of mana and he’s summoned now because we really need to summon him before playing the next cards. When you summon any creature or cast any sorcery use his abilities to copy them.
The Legend Rule sucks. Get rid of it with Mirror Gallery.
Mimic Vat is the last card we need mana for.
With Riku we can make just enough of them without using Kiki-Jiki.With the second to last use of Kiki-Jiki's cloning, clone Mimic Vat We want to imprint everything onto them, so tap every nontoken, and every token that you don’t need and cast, then copy with Riku, Righteous Fury. (By that I mean sacrifice everything except the Mimic Vats we’ll use and each copy of Rings of Brighthearth. Life is way more valuable than the tokens, Rings of Brighthearth is needed to keep our progress and is more valuable than Doubling Season because it lets us instantly get them back, and imprinting everything onto Mimic Vats means we’ll everything back.) Now you can activate the Mimic Vats for more Kiki-Jikis and Paradox Engines. (and the other stuff just to have more stuff and because you’ll get your mana back.) Needles to say, use Rings of Brighthearth on the Mimic Vats when you use them.Leave the original Righteous Fury on the stack when you summon the next card. (It has Flash.)
To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:
1: Activate the Mimic Vats of Doubling Season then Rings of Brighthearth.
2: Tap each Kiki-Jiki one at a time to clone Doubling Season and Rings of Brighthearth.
3: Activate Kiki-Jiki’s Mimic Vat and repeat step 2.
4: Activate the Mimic Vat of Paradox Engine and everything else except Selvala's Enforcer.
Do not do anything else until the last Paradox Engine Trigger resolves.
Card 16 – Using Life as a Resource
We need to trigger Paradox Engine as many times as possible, so we summon Wydwen, the Biting Gale and pay one life to unsummon her. We can repetitively unsummon and resummon her using all but one of our life, (Using all but one of your life Unsummoning and Resummoning Wydwen will be called the Wydwen Dance from now on.) and we just gained a lot of life with Righteous Fury.
Now tap everything expendable and Righteous Fury resolve. (Everything except the original Wydwen, Mimic Vats that we’ll use, and each Rings of Brighthearth is expendable.) and do the Wyden Dance.
Cards 17-19, 21, & 23-60 – Setup
Dump all of these cards onto the table. They’re set up for later and will be explained when they’re used, but there’s still some things you need to know about them now.
Oath of Teferi has a non-optional exile enter the battlefield ability, you’ll get the exiled thing back, but not until it doesn’t matter anymore, so have all of the Oaths target the same expendable thing.
Kheru Spellsnatcher needs to be summoned face down in order for it to do anything. It is not expendable while face down.
When you have more than one of the same Planeswalker, Mirror Gallery is not expendable.
The last card you need notes about is Soul Echo. Even if X is 0, it’s not sacrificed until its controller’s next upkeep, AKA, when we don’t care anymore. Thankfully, Riku clones it because we want one for ourselves and we need to give one to the opponent. We want one because it lets us do the Wydwen Dance down to 0 life instead of 1. (Despite that it’s still expendable because the only times it would leave the battlefield are when you’re gaining life.) We want to give the opponent one because bashing their atoms into nonexistence is part of the combo.
Melek, Izzet Paragon lets us cast Sorceries, which we never drew, from our library. (His other ability is ironically mostly unimportant and does not make Swarm Intelligence redundant.) We start with giving the Harmless Offering of Soul Echo.
Card 20 & 15 – Life Gain
Cast Archangel's Light from the Library to shuffle your graveyard back into your library and gain two life for each card shuffled. It will get copied by Melek and Riku. This may seem like a bit of an overkill use for such a bad card when there’s just Righteous Fury, but it’s worth it. After a copy resolves we do the Wydwen Dance, cast Righteous Fury sacrificing every expendable thing, (Everything but the original Wydwen, Mimic Vats that we’ll use, and each Rings of Brighthearth is expendable. Soul Echo is expendable because we’ll have more by the time we’re back to 0 life.) and do the Wydwen Dance between Righteous Furies.
Even though we got the Show and Tell from the beginning back and it looks like a free Paradox Engine trigger, do not cast it. You really don’t want the opponent to get any more lands from it. Harmless Offering on the other hand, is a free Paradox Engine trigger, especially if you target something that’s going to die before the offering resolves.
Card 21 – Let’s do it again! (An Incomprehensible Number More Times!)
When we're down to just the original Archangel's Light on the stack, pay Kheru Spellsnatcher’s morph cost to turn it face up it to counter Archangel's Light which we recast. After recasting Archangel's Light you can let Kheru Spellsnatcher die to Righteous Fury then draw it with Selvala's Enforcer after Archangel's Light shuffles it back in and you can do all of that again, but you need to be careful not to mill yourself. If this is the first time doing this step, don’t draw yet.
This may sound like an infinite combo, but the reason it isn't is because Selvala's Enforcer makes both players draw a card and Melek only lets you play instants and sorceries from your library. Your opponent's library is limited. Everything is a resource, even our enemy.
Card 22– Calling for Backup
Teferi, Temporal Archmage needs to enter the battlefield when there’s only one Doubling Season. This means that right after the last Righteous Fury we do things differently. First, we do NOT do the Wyden dance until the rest of this step is done. We activate Doubling Season’s Mimic Vat, let it make one Doubling Season, then and play all of these cards while the rest of Mimic Vat’s triggers are on the stack. (You can do all the Paradox Engine stuff, but you have to only clone Rings of Brighthearth and don’t use Doubling Season’s Mimic Vat. It sucks...)
Use Teferi’s -10 We’ll need that Emblem later and we can get Teferi back, so it’s better to let him peace out to the graveyard than have loyalty and stay. We want Teferi back, so now we activate Selvala's Enforcer’s Mimic Vat to draw Teferi and Kheru Spellsnatcher. When summoning Teferi later we can have more Doubling Seasons.
Domri Rade and Garruk Relentless/Garruk the Veil-Cursed will be talked about in the next section.
23-37 – Say Hello to my Little (Super) Friends!
When the opponent is out of cards in their library and we’re down to just the original Archangel's use Domri Rade’s +1 to “draw” Kheru Spellsnatcher and copy that ability with each Rings of Brighthearth then when we’re down to just the original Archangel's Light on the stack again we can do it again thanks to Oath of Teferi. (That card effectively doubles the number of Planeswalkers in this deck.) We can “draw” Kheru Spellsnatcher with the rest of the Planeswalkers we have duplicates of. (Liliana, the Last Hope "draws" from the graveyard.)
From now on these cards will be called the Lesser Walkers.
Before moving on to the next step you can have the Mirror Galleries die to have the Legend Rule make you sacrifice the Lesser Walkers. Archangel’s Light will shuffle them back into your library.
Note: Oath of Teferi does not go infinite because no matter how many you have, it still only lets you use Planeswalker Abilities twice. It also don’t go infinite from bouncing Planeswalkers because they return during the end step, which is past when we can deal damage.
Cards 30-55 & 22 – (Super) Friends of my (Super) Friends
Note: From what I can tell, this is every Planeswalker that can go in the deck that can draw and doesn’t go infinite. (Nissa, Vital Force “draws” from the graveyard.) I know that this deck list isn’t the final version. Partly because I always think I’m done and find something else, but mostly because there will be more Planeswalkers that fit into this deck in the future.
After using each of the Lesser Walkers, we use Teferi, Temporal Archmage’s +1 to “draw” a Lesser Walker and copy that “draw” with each Rings of Brighthearth. We then use Lesser Walkers each time we draw them, then after the final draw we do it again with the second use of Teferi, Temporal Archmage’s +1. We repeat this process with the next Planeswalker and then the next one until we’re out of Planeswalkers.
With Karn, Scion of Urza you have to keep cards in your hand to be able to use his +1 without exiling anything.
Jace, Architect of Thought and Jace, the Mind Sculptor need at least three cards in the library to draw two or not kill you respectively. (With Architect of Thought the rules of the challenge say that if the opponent gets to make any choices they will make the choice that’s worst for you.)For Jace, the Living Guildpact let the final Archangel's Light resolve. Jace’s -10 is a meaner version of the Power Nine card Timetwister, so not only does it make you draw seven, but it also resets your opponent’s deck to 59 cards (They don’t shuffle back the land they got from Show and Tell) which lets you draw with Selvala’s Enforcer again. The seven drawn should have seven of the Spell Snatcher Snatchers for a total of 66 uses of their abilities per Jace’s -10. To draw them activate Selvala's Enforcer’s Mimic Vat three times without any Doubling Seasons and seven times while there’s only three Doubling Seasons.
Card 56 – Murder Time!
Right before the last Jace Timetwister resolves, use Garruk, Apex Predator to kill Jace, the Living Guildpact so he get shuffled back into the library. Resummon and reuse Jace. When it’s down to the last timetwister again, use the second use of Garruk to kill him again.
When this step is over make sure we have Archangel's Light exiled. Now, we not get to move to the next phase
Cards 57-59 – Near Endless Combat
Attack with one Brago, King Eternal, every Scourge of the Throne, and every expendable thing you want to get untapped by Scourge of the Throne's Attack Trigger. Before combat damage is dealt cast Archangel's Light and make sure everything attacking except Brago dies. (Scourge of the Throne only makes extra combat phases if the opponent has the highest health or is tied, so we want to deal as little damage as possible to get the most Brago triggers as possible before going all out.) Use Brago’s trigger to flicker every nontoken and use the Planeswalkers again and do everything that goes with it, then move to the next combat phase and do this again until the opponent is down to zero life. Soul Echo keeps the opponent alive. And because of our Soul Echo they’re tied for the highest health which means one more chance to make more Combat Phases.
With both us and the opponent at 0 Life this is the final time we can add combat phases, so we start going all out. Attack with Brago, every Scourge of the Throne, and every Rings of Brighthearth.
Soul Echo’s only purpose in this deck is overkill. It lets the opponent live so we can destroy them with each extra combat phases created by the Scourge of the Throne army.
In the end we do this with each layer below the top one growing as the combos plays out. The lower layers have higher priority.
For each Combat Phase attack with Brago amount of damage and flicker every Planeswalker.
For each Planeswalker we draw a Spell Snatcher Snatchers for each Rings of Brighthearth.
For Each Spell Snatcher Snatchers we draw Kheru Spellsnatcher for each Rings of Brighthearth.
For each Kheru Spellsnatcher recast Archangel's Light which gets copied by each Swarm Intelligence.
For each Archangel's Light cast Righteous Fury which get copied by each Swarm Intelligence.
For each life gained unsummon and resummon Wydwen to trigger each Paradox Engine.
For each Paradox Engine trigger do The Thing.
The Thing:
1: Activate the Mimic Vats of Doubling Season then Rings of Brighthearth.
2: Tap each Kiki-Jiki one at a time to clone Doubling Season and Rings of Brighthearth.
3: Activate Kiki-Jiki’s Mimic Vat and repeat step 2.
4: Activate the Mimic Vat of Paradox Engine and everything else except Selvala's Enforcer.
The Finale
When the final combat phase begins, we do the combo as usual even though we can’t attack with anything more, but when the last of Garruk, Apex Predator’s murders target Ajani, Mentor of Heroes instead. With Ajani we can put three +1/+1 counters on a creatures and those counters get multiplied by Doubling Season.
The amount of damage is impossible to over exaggerate.
Although the combo is done, we still haven’t won. Technically winning is optional because the challenge doesn’t say you have to win. You can concede now and still have it count, but if you really want to win, you can wait for the opponent’s Soul Echo to be sacrificed during their upkeep.
I want to know how good this deck is, but I'm having two problems with figuring that out. First, after reading what layers and stages are I'm not entirely sure what level this deck reaches. I know that everything with Paradox Engine is a Stage, but I'm not entirely sure if the Life Gain, Planeswalkers, or Combat make a Hyperstage. I don't think so though... The other problem is I don't know how to calculate the damage done. If it's not to much to ask could someone give me an estimate on the damage done?
By the way, I’ve had this on mind since Silver Border Cards were temporally legal in commander, but it didn’t feel important enough to point out.
If Silver Border cards were legal then before starting a deck that goes for the highest non-infinite amount of damage, you’d want to use a deck that casts Double Dip many times as possible without infinite combos against your opponent first. (If you went infinite in that game, that would mean you’d go infinite in the actual challenge before it even starts and probably get the “honorable” record of the quickest fail in any MTG game. Congratulations!) In the best case scenario, you play that deck against every living person then use this deck in a multiplayer game against all of them. That said, multiplying that the life gain by ~7.4 Billion probably doesn’t do much, but it’s like a way nerdier version of the hypothetical question, “What would happen if everyone went to the same place and jumped at the same time?” (XKCD’s what if blog has the most accurate answer the jumping question. To adapt it for this situation make everyone stand in way that spells overkill.)
If for some reason the rules say that you can’t do infinites in the actual game, but ignores the Potential Loophole of Infinite Unglued Double Cards in the previous game, then you could just make a deck that casts infinite Double Deals and use your Cat Tribal Deck or whatever else you want in the actual game. It’s extremely unlikely that the loophole exists, (especially since there was never a loophole for Infinity Elemental) but I thought I’d point out that idea anyway.
Off Topic Right After Posting This Edit: This site lets you post ~20,000 Character posts? 0_o I thought I'd have to double post to get this post through.
Edit: Fixed the Mistakes. The Mimic Vat mistake happened because I got used to everything having haste, so I forgot that Riku doesn't grant haste. I don't know how the Jace mistake happened because I was careful to check for that kind of thing which is why ether Kiora isn't in. Thanks Deedlit!
The
Necromancer (or Noob)
Cat.
Don't ask, I don't know why ether...
I don't see how you can tap the Mimic Vats, since they will be creatures with March of the Machines on the battlefield. We can't destroy the March of the Machines cards using Righteous Fury since we can't tap March of the Machines.
I think Jace, Architect of Thought goes infinite. You can cast it with one Doubling Season on the battlefield, so that it gets 8 counters. Then, activate the ultimate ability, destroying it, and copy the ability many times with Rings of Brighthearth. Use Archangel's Light to shuffle Jace into the library, and use one of the ability copies to redraw Jace, along with many other cards like Kheru Spellsnatcher
Similarly, Jace, the Mind Scupltor goes infinite; cast it with two Doubling Seasons on the battlefield, then use the +0 and +12 loyalty abilities.
Assuming these problems are fixed, I get the following for the numbers:
Each Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker abiilty can copy a Doubling Season, taking X Doubling Seasons to 2^X Doubling Seasons.
Each time you tap Kiki-Jiki with X Rings of Brighthearth, we get X copies of the ability, taking X to 2^^X.
Each time we create a copy of Kiki-Jiki with X Doubling Seasons, we get 2^X Kiki-Jikis, taking X to 2^^^(2^X).
Each time we tap a Mimic Vat imprinted with Kiki-Jiki with X Rings, we take X to 2^^^^X.
Each time we cast a spell with X Paradox Engines, we can untap the Mimic Vats X times, taking X to 2^^^^^X.
Each time we gain X life, we can do the Wydwen dance X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^X.
Each time we cast Righteous Fury, with X Rikus/Meleks, we get X copies, taking X to 2^^^^^^^X.
Each time we cast Archangel's Light with X Rikus, we can reshuffle in Righteous Fury X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate a Lesser Walker with X Rings, we can retrieve Kheru Spellsnatcher X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate a Greater Walker with X Rings, we can draw a Lesser Walker X times, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we activate Garruk, Apex Predator with X Rings, we can destroy a Greater Walker X times and retrieve it, taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^^X.
Each time we have a combat phase, we can attack with X Bragos, flickering Garruk X times and taking X to 2^^^^^^^^^^^^X.
So, first you attack with Brago 9 times, allowing 18 activations of Garruk, Apex Predator and generating about 2^^^^^^^^^^^^20. Then, we attack with 2^^^^^^^^^^^^20 Scourge of the Thrones, getting that many combat phases. So the final damage will be about 2^^^^^^^^^^^^^(2^^^^^^^^^^^^20) (13 and 12 arrows respectively).
Concerning your loophole - is a Vintage game modifiable by a previously played Unglued game? If that were to be allowable, then I suppose one could further argue that we don't even need the modifying game to be an official M:tG game - we could just make up a game that says that in your next Magic game you start out with Rayo's number of life. Perhaps I should add another rule saying we are just playing a standard game starting fresh, unmodified by anything happening prior (This would eliminate someone's idea to use one of the Karns to restart the game with cards already in play.).
This is a fascinating discussion. I thought I was doing pretty well with a deck that doubles the number of 1/1 tokens each turn and then plays 4 Coat of Arms, 4 Copy Artifact, and 4 Craterhoof Behemoths, for about 10^114 damage after 40 turns of doubling. The stuff above is insane, though. Does that end up being larger than Graham's Number?
I haven't put much thought into this, but I would be curious to see just how much mana could be produced using Mana Reflection + Gaea's Cradle.
Someone who has spent more time looking at this should see if this is actually a problem or not.
If it is a problem, I think a simple counterspell will solve it, countering the allay that is under the triggers will put it into the graveyard where it belongs.
@nerdyjoe: Thanks for the heads up! That particular section was written for an older version of the deck, so it needs to be rewritten; the start is quite different now. But yes, for that older start, that does seem to be a problem. It was just a case of me being greedy and using Copy Enchantment to copy Dual Nature for some extra copies of Dual Nature, rather than just have it copy nothing so that we can clear the stack and let Allay go to the graveyard. We do have a card that counters spells (Cephalid Shrine), but we have a limited number of cards in our early draws, so putting in Cephalid Shrine would likely cost us an early exponent. I think the best thing to do is simply not have that first Copy Enchantment copy Dual Nature; this leads to 4 and then 8 Dual Natures, rather than 6 and then 10, and we eventually wind up with F_3 (2^2^2^4108) rather than F_3 (2^2^2^40,494).
Last night my opponent turn oned:
Swamp
Dark ritual
(B = card that allowed him to discard Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur)
BB = Animate Dead
That was a quick game.
http://alex.shankland.org/index.php/2018/06/11/megacombo-1/
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Interestingly, even when you don't limit yourself to going off in a single, somewhat early turn you still wouldn't go infinite since the opponent should deck by turn 54. (Assuming a 60 basic lands deck for them.) So if you are fine with allowing that you could give the opponent life each turn with Ajani Unyielding, getting some repetitions of the final layer. But yeah, sitting around for all those turns feels kinda wrong.
I actually have a question about Ackermann combos and expressing them at the end: how do you get numbers for the Conway expression? I know each separate Ackermann combo adds another number to the chain, and each layer adds 1 to the last number in the chain, but how do you figure out what the middle numbers are?
For instance, with 6 Ackermann combos and 4 layers after them, I know it would look like 2->x->x->x->x->5, but what would the values of x be there?
I can only get one Ackermann combo in standard, my method is much less extensible, but I feel bad leaving question marks in the final damage total.
The second to last number in the chain represents how many times the final layer is applied. 10->10->10->10->1->5 is just X1 = 10->10->10->10, so that's the number you have to beat initially; then 10->10->10->10->2->5 is X2 = 10->10->10->10->X1->4, and 10->10->10->10->3->5 is X3 = 10->10->10->10->X2->4, and so on; each increment of the second to last number is another application of the final layer.
That's about all the precision that we worried about. You could adjust the third to last number to get as close to your final damage as you can, so in the above you would choose 10->10->10->X->n->5 so that 10->10->10->X would be a good approximation of how much you get before repeatedly applying the final layer. But, typically X is itself very large and requires its own Conway chain, so you may want to not bother with that. In that case, just choose a "base" number for all the previous numbers - I chose 10 because that was a typical base number to use, but 3 is a rational choice as well. (Not 2, since 2->2->anything is just 4)
I don't understand how your megastage works, but from reading the hyperstage description, it sounds like you guys are implementing the same set of instructions lijil described in #643. You chain together the same stage by adding 2 instructions: use the new resource L to turn all O into I, and put a dividing trigger M on the stack, and use up all I and an M on the stack to create one L. It's actually the same way I'm implementing my stage in standard, using a kind of state variable to divide an upper level from a lower one. The problem is that it's not nearly as extensible as the stage combo: I could only get one of a lower stage and it looks like you guys have managed... 2?
The problem is the delete-all-I approach to preventing infinites. If you can instead make it so that, once you've made an L, spending an I requires using up an M. That way, you can't use the I you save in the lower stage: you either have to let the lower stage resolve completely and use up an M from below IT to regenerate your stage, which is obviously limited, or you have to spend the L you just generated immediately, at which point it's too late to feed the lower stage with your I.
The best way I can see to enforce that restriction is with an imprint card like mimic Vat: if we only have one vat, generating a new untapped hasty token requires putting something on it, and the only way to put the right thing on mimic Vat to start the next stage is by using a trigger from the level below, I think we can force them to only go one way.
So, let's say you start with a stage:
1. If our nontoken creature I is on the Vat, use one I to push X PB on the stack.
2. Pop one PB off the stack to push X BM on the stack.
3. Pop one BM off the stack to produce X O.
4. Pop one PB off the stack and one BM below it to produce one I.
Then add:
5. If our L-producing creature is on the vat, Use one L to push lots of NL on the stack.
6. Pop one NL off the stack to produce X I.
7. Pop one NL off the stack and one BM below it to produce one L, and imprint our L producing creature on the vat.
8. Pop one NL off the stack to put our I-producing creature back on the vat.
That pretty clearly implements a hyperstage: we build a stack of PB- M stages, separated by NL layers, and each combination of NL/BM lets us rebuild the stage above to Grand effect.
The trick is that, if you add another linked "stage":
9. If our K-producing creature is on the vat, use one K to push X SF on the stack.
10. Pop one SF off the stack to produce X L.
11. Pop one SF off the stack and one BM below it to generate one K, and put our K-producing creature on the vat.
12. Pop one SF off the stack to put our L-producing creature on the vat.
If I'm not mistaken, this implements a megastage: each BM in the stage below a K layer produces another K layer, which in turn corresponds to another L-hyperstage.
As long as we can ensure that each new trigger type can hit itself and the next creature down to put it on the vat, but not any of the ones below it, we can keep chaining these modules together, where each module takes us from f_w^n(x) to f_w^(n+1)(x). If we can get even three such linked stages, we'll probably be able to beat the current combo (I don't see this version taking up nearly as much space as the current hyper/megastags, so more room for subsequent stages and layers). And if we can generalize it such that the old stages can link together this way, we could get up to f_w^25(x)!
Obviously, it would take a lot of retooling, and I haven't the faintest idea how to force Mimic Vat's imprinting to match whatever resource we're consuming, but it seems worth exploring at the very least.
That's a really great idea. Having to eliminate all of a particular resource was very limiting; Worldpurge was pretty much the only usable card that could eliminate mana, and Worldfire was one of very few cards that could eliminate all extra life. So if we can get implement this new idea, it should really blow the barn door off the combo.
That said, I'm very unsure of the details as well. Paging Iijil...
EDIT: Here's one issue. In the old way of doing things, we would have a lot of Mimic Vats, and we would get a new creature by destroying the nontoken version and imprinting it on a new Mimic Vat. If we only have one Mimic Vat though, we would have to get the new creature by untapping the Mimic Vat. But, if the lowest level creature can do that, what's to stop it from doing so when the Mimic Vat has a higher level creature imprinted?
EDIT: I suppose we can bounce and replay the Mimic Vat instead.
EDIT: One thing I'm confused about: How is a BM trigger of an I creature supposed to produce an L, even assisted by an NL trigger?
I'm not sure this really works as a hyperstage.
Consider what happens when we have run down the topmost stage and the easy resource top offs form step 6. We now want to dip back into the second stage and get a new NL layer. so we use 7 to get an L back. That also switches the imprint to L and uses a BM of the second stage. So we use 5 to refresh the NL layer, switch back to I imprint with 8 and go through the top stage as often as we can with 6. Fine so far.
At some point the second stage runs out of BM trigger on top and we need to use 2 to refresh that first layer by using a PB from the second layer. To preserve the hyperstage structure we have to do this between 7 and 5. Still fine.
Then the second layer of the second stage runs out and we need to use 4 followed by 1 to refresh it. We still need to do this between 7 and 5 but after 7 the imprint is set to L and we can't use 1 to spent our I. This is not fine.
I don't see any simple fix for that. When we want to keep the second stage from spending I that belongs to the first stage then how can we allow the second stage to spend the I it legitimately accumulates while working as intended?
Of course the answer we currently use is to forcibly remove all first stage I. Which, as you pointed out, doesn't seem very friendly to extensions. Maybe there is a better way out there?