This might be a stretch, but maybe if we paired up two stages?
That way, we could alternate between them. The stage below any given NL layer would not be able to consume the same resource as the stage above it. You could refuel a lower stage, by going another level down, but that would require giving up an entire stage to do it, and I don't think that would be able to go infinite.
Edit: I think the bottom trigger might be the easiest part, in a way: it can be something related to using mimic Vat. Untapping it, say, or generating the generic Mana needed to activate it.
Edit: no, that doesn't work either: we can still bank up the top resources, and just save it as we run through the intervening stage. There has to be a more extensible way to chain these, though.
What if we diffentiated between spending the resource during the stage and building up the stack initially? We'd need a way to make one PB and one BM trigger directly translate into a new stack of PB triggers, rather than making one of the input resource. That way, you can't save input resource from the upper stage to the lower, because you're not actually saving any. It's a /very/ weird structure, but we would probably only have to do it for the stage itself, not for the extensions.
The stage above the NL layer may be different from the stage right below it, but the stage two places above the NL layer would then be the same, so we should be able to hold on to that resource if we never destroy it, I would think.
EDIT: Well, the input resource is what allows us to build the stack back up when we go more than 2 layers down; as we resolve the top layers, we build up the input resource, which allows us to rebuild the stack up to the exact same number of layers each time. I don't know how we would do that without some quantity to indicate how much we can build back up.
But, if you do have a way so that we don't need this for the extensions, then maybe it could be okay that the first "stage" is only a layer or two.
Hmmm, right. What if we worked by toggling between two resources in two stages, and using the intervening layer to convert between the two? It would mimic the effect of "delete all I", because you wouldn't be able to save your resource for the next stage down of that type, but it would also keep the stage structured properly.
The initial stage is by far the hardest part of this: I don't think the problem lijil find applies to the extensions. There's no point where you have to generate one resource in the middle of generating another one and resetting the state.
So the intervening layer mandates converting all of resource 1 into resource 2? That could work, but at first glance it seems just as hard if not harder to implement than just deleting all of resource 1.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the problem Iijil pointed out is present in all stage types; for the hyperstage, we have to resolve arbitrarily many stages down, and we need to be able to build all the way back up to the original number of stages. So we need some resource to keep track of that number. But, if we can carry over that resource from a higher hyperstage, we won't be able to distinguish between the those resources and the ones from the current hyperstage.
What I mean by that is, there's never a transition between, say, an NL and an SF trigger: you go from SF up to NL, but never down the other way around. Each new extension is always preceded by a PB/BM stage, because we're using the same stage to fuel every new n-stage beyond it. So if we can find a way to safely lock the input resource of that one stage, the rest of the extensions should fall in precisely as needed.
I guess what we could do is start with a deletion-based hyperstage, and then try to build extensions on top of that: because we're only ever using the same bottom trigger for each new extension, and that trigger is eventually generated by the same resource, we'd only need a way to use one delete-all-I for every hyperstage and beyond, right?
Hmm, I'm still not seeing it. Perhaps there is something wrong with my thinking, but it seems to me there doesn't have to be any direct connection between an NL and an SF trigger. What matters is we are using our L resource to keep track of the number of stages in a particular hyperstage (I think it's L, our letter notation is confusing to me), so we can't allow L to be increased without losing something of greater importance. If we can generate a higher hyperstage with more L, unless we have a provision to delete all the L in the megastage transition, we can carry over that L to the current hyperstage, and that will go infinite. Even if we have to delete all I to carry this out, we still wind up ahead if we can generate more L.
I have since participating here taken a liking to noticing cards that dodge going infinite, and I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this, but on the topic of forcing the use of all of a resource, the card Mirage Mirror is interestingly noninfinite. If you have 2 permanents that combined would go infinite, like a Bloom Tender and a Horseshoe Crab, you can make Mirage Mirror alternate turning into those things but only as much as you have generic mana to spend at the beginning because as soon as you let one resolve, the Mirror loses its ability to transform.
It wasn't something that would help with the ongoing deck so I wasn't in a rush to mention it, but it is a card that could be used to convert an indefinite amount of resources into a different resources, but only in discrete packets.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
I actually used Mirage
Mirror in my standard megacombo for a while: you'd top up on alternating triggers between targeting Treasure Map and a creature you can untap with Rallying Roar, then blinking it with Aethergeode Miner to turn just 2 energy into a lot of Mana of any color. I had to drop it when I switched to Cogwork Assembler because letting it make copies of any permanent is super unsafe.
Yeah, it seems like my approach to an extensible n-stage framework may not be tenable. I still believe there's a better way than to force delete all of a resource, but for in the meantime, your configuration is probably still the best.
I don't know if you have read the rest of the thread yet, but feel free to ask us about anything. As you suspected, the megastage creates a series of hyperstages using the same method with which the hyperstage creates a series of stages. This time with life as the resource; We spend 3 life to flashback Acorn Harvest, triggering Spellweaver Helix to cast Deconstruct, Worldpurge and Gerrard's Verdict. (We can imprint four sorceries thanks to Panharmonicon.) Deconstruct gets lots of green mana to create a large hyperstage; Worldpurge brings the Island back to our hand, so that we can discard it with Gerrard's Verdict to get the 3 life back. But the Worldpurge will eliminate all permanents and all mana in our mana pool.
If we can't make the extensible n-stage idea work, the best that we can hope for is to create a gigastage or an additional megastage/hyperstage the hard way. I posted some thoughts at:
That deck looks pretty good. My only thought is that it feels like we're leaving the realm of "tokens as an n-stage resource" too early: clearing Mana pools and life totals is hard, but removing multiple kinds of tokens seems easier.
My first thought is that we're constantly making bajilions of useless token copies of our tap creatures with Dual Nature. That means that mass-haste-granting abilities can generate lots of untapped hasty tokens, as well as untap effects. If we could set up an interventing delete-all-I stage before the life megastage, based on giving creatures haste, that could bump what we already have up to a gigastage. Something like:
Input resource 1 red mana
Output resource: lots of hasty copies of a creature that can tap to cast a sorcery (need not be deep reconnaissance) for free. We would have to change around the original hyperstage to use this token instead of green Mana, and I'm not entirely sure how.
Goblin Bushwhacker, to let us turn 1 red Mana into X triggers that would each give all our not-hasty Dual Nature token copies of the above creature haste, to create a new hyperstage.
A way to bounce Goblin Bushwhacker and our red-producer, almost certainly Simian Spirit Guide, as well as all our tokens, to hand. Engulf the Shore seems like a good choice, as long as we can get 2 and only 2 islands down, and our linking creature has 2 or fewer toughness.
From there, we can just replace Deconstruct with Rite of Flame, and I think we'd have a gigastage. All that's left is to find a creature which can tap to give us a sorcery cast. I think that, if we could find a sorcery that we could cheaply draw from library, without allowing us to draw any cards from higher up the chain, we could use Deathrite Shaman as the chaining creature: we would need to keep green Mana unavailable to preserve the current megastage, and prevent the killing of lands, and allow for black Mana production, but we could use its ability to exile some sorcery, use a Mirror to reshuffle it, and then redraw the sorcery somehow. We could do it by limiting color, for instance.
Additionally, we could remove Deep Reconnaissance, and would have to replace Mox Emerald with... Engineered Explosives? That's the hardest part: we need an artifact, where we can't make tokens or the tokend are useless, that we can reuse with Rebuild to kill Deathrite Shaman, putting it on Mimic Vat.
Edit: could we maybe allow the storing of Mana, where the Mana can be used to kill Deathrite Shaman? Then we could use Mox Sapphire as the rebuild target, and use it to pay for the ability on something like Escape Routes, Homarid Shaman, or King Crab, to kill Deathrite with Horobi and then put it on the Vat.
Excellent idea! Unfortunately, Spellweaver Helix can be used to exile sorcery cards, so we wouldn't need Deathrite Shaman for that. I've also learned from Iijil that we have to be very careful about indirect effects; for example, if we were to use Deathrite Shaman, we would have to make sure that we couldn't tap it in the higher hyperstage to exile our blue sorcery, use Tezzeret's Gatebreaker at some point to bring it to our hand, resolve down to the lower hyperstage, then cast the blue sorcery without having to pay a hasted Deathrite Shaman from the lower hyperstage. So those are a couple of things that we need to figure out.
I think that, if our only blue sorceries are cards that would reset everything (Worldpurge, for instance, would be safe), then you would have to immediately cast the sorcery once you exile/draw it: it would be the only way to repeatedly trigger Spellweaver Volute, and necessary for the transition, so you could never bank it in between.
We also need to make sure the next hyperstage down is actually necessary to keep the combo going, so we have to use up a trigger from below for... Something. There's still a ways to go before it can be slotted in.
Deathrite feels hard to replace...
Edit: Tezzeret's Gatebreaker also grabs an artifact, which means we can use a Psychic Battle trigger to kill Metallurgeon, imprint it on the Vat, make a hasty token, shuffle it back in, use the next psychic Battle trigger to bounce and replay Gatebreaker, use the trigger to get Metallurgeon, and replay Metallurgeon without using up a Bloodbond March trigger. No good. That and the Helix pretty conclusively rules out Deathrite as an option.
So, our creature needs to have: 2 or fewer toughness ideally (we could go higher, at the cost of reducing space for further layers later on), a tap ability that lets us, in some way, recast a sorcery to trigger Volute, and some search space we can hit with Rebuild.
Yes, you can only bank the blue sorcery at the end of the higher hyperstage. The potential problem is causing the lower hyperstage to go infinite; if resolving the higher hyperstage can result in a net benefit of a blue sorcery, and recreating the higher hyperstage only costs things that are cheaper (a Metallurgeon, say), then there's nothing to stop us from repeating the lower hyperstage forever.
So far, the way we have been requiring the trigger from below is that we need some generic mana to be able to imprint our sorceries, or put our instants back in the graveyard. We specifically set things up so that we need an artifact targeting to get cheap mana (that is the reason for Su-Chi, rather than a more convenient Tooth of Ramos), and at the end of a stage or hyperstage all the Metallurgeons are cleared, so we need to resolve some Psychic Battle triggers from Metallurgeon and target Su-Chi. In other words, we make the trigger from below necessary to set our board back up again.
Edit: Recycling a sorcery arcane is a great way to distinguish between the Spellweaver Volute sorcery and the Spellweaver Helix one. But, I just noticed something: Our usual n-stage method is to spend an n-stage resource to trigger both an ability that creates lots of n-1 stage resources, and an ability that destroys all of those resources to get back the n-stage resource. With the latest combo, we are spending the n-stage resource trigger the first ability, and that first ability creates lots of hasted Kitsune Diviners, each of which can be used to trigger the second ability. Right now, I'm not seeing an infinite, since once we exile Simian Spirit Guide, we need to wait until the next Bloodbond March trigger is resolved to bring it back to the battlefield, but still the independence and multiplicity of that second trigger worry me just a little. Iijil, do you see any problem?
So basically, we need an artifact that lets us, once we cast our hyperstage creature from our hand, kill it so it goes on Mimic Vat.
Could we potentially use Mob Rule? If we cut Swarm Intelligence (we'd need some other way to make our R sorcery scale, Precursor Golem+something, who knows), we could make it so we /need/ to play it and choose the mode we want, which wouldn't untap or grant haste to our Metallurgeons. Then we'd need to use the next Psychic Battle trigger down to kill Metallurgeon and get a hasted token.
Edit: if we have to wait until the next "target spirit" trigger, isn't that no longer a megastage? We only get to rebuild our hyperstage transition by using up a trigger from the next transition down, giving us either another stage or another hyperstage, I'm not sure which.
Hmm, I just remembered: our megastage "destroy all" ability has to destroy all hasted copies of our hyperstage creature, and also all Mimic Vats that have our hyperstage creature imprinted on them. Since we don't have to have March of the Machines on the battlefield, we may need to have the ability "destroy all artifacts and creatures" or "destroy all nonland permanents", since finding an ability like "destroy all artifacts and red creatures" or "destroy all artifacts and creatures of power 2 or less" seems unlikely.
Well, if we go for Devastation Tide or something similar as the way we perform the transition, if we can tie a Metallurgeon activation to playing Omniscience, it becomes almost too easy. Would Treasure Keeper/Hypergenesis break the world?
Cards like Hypergenesis and Show and Tell don't work in our current deck, since at the end of a hyperstage, after Worldpurge resolves, we can still have Rebuild, Hypergenesis, Rebuild, Acorn Harvest on the stack. The Rebuild can bring Mox Emerald back to our hand, the Hypergenesis can allow us to replay it and tap it for a green mana, then the next Rebuild brings it back to our hand, and we can later play it and tap it for another green mana. We need to replace Mox Emerald, so I guess it depends on exactly how the hyperstage is set up; but if we replace it with another tapping 0 CMC artifact, the same problem will probably occur.
Note that Engineered Explosives currently doesn't work, since we can cast it for positive mana with March of the Machines in play, and we will get lots of usable copies.
Edit: I just noticed your question about waiting for the next "target spirit" trigger. To recreate an n-stage, we can actually spend quite a lot, including any m-stage resource for m less than n. For example, if we had to spend an n-1-stage resource, then the next n-1-stage down would resolve after just X recreations of the higher n-stage. But, then the next n-1-stage below that top n-1-stage would be able to recreate the top n-1-stage with a higher X, and since we are assuming that the n-stage works properly, we can recreate the top-n-1-stage a bajillion times with acceptable cost. We can even resolve the entire top n-1-stage to recreate the higher n-stage, so long as we can recreate the top n-1-stage with the next n-1-stage down. But, we cannot spend an n-stage resource, since that will shrink our series of n-1-stages by one each time and we will resolve the lower n-stage after just X iterations.
In your case, spending a psychic battle trigger isn't going to be too much, since it isn't going to be an n-stage resource.
Edit: So, let's focus on the hyperstage to start with. It doesn't look like we have the correct hyperstage creature yet; Deathrite Shaman doesn't work because Spellweaver Helix can also exile a sorcery. Kitsune Diviner doesn't seem to work because one tap can create many Hana Kamis, each of which can bring back many arcane sorceries. We could perhaps use Hana Kami as our hyperstage creature directly, if we can find a way to have to hyperstage transition create exactly one more Hana Kami, hasted or unhasted.
That brings us to the other problem: How do we make Rebuild allow us to have exactly one more hyperstage creature? Rebuild affects artifacts, but Metallurgeon can only bring artifact creatures to our hand. So either we need to get rid of March of the Machines, or else use some artifact that can't be turned into a creature, like a 0 CMC artifact. But, there aren't that many useful 0 CMC artifacts. Using a Mox to generate mana, and then using the mana to create a creature, is dangerous because of the possibility of holding on to the generated mana in the megastage transition. Herbal Poultice and Delif's Cone can target arbitrary creatures, but they need to be sacrificed to do so, so Rebuild can't bring them back to our hand after. If we make a cheap way to bring an artifact back from the graveyard to our hand or the battlefield, then we won't need Rebuild. (It's too bad that Unstable cards aren't legal, there are a whole bunch of cards we could use then!)
One idea I had: Use an artifact land, then use an ability that discards a land from our hand, like Seismic Assault. Then, we only need a way to bring back a land from the graveyard to the battlefield; if there is nothing better, Titania, Protector of Argoth and Evacuation should do. I think that works.
But, we still need a hyperstage creature. Dralnu, Lich Lord is an idea, but it allows us to cast Acorn Harvest with just green mana, which is bad. What about Elite Arcanist? It could be coupled with a split card that has both a sorcery and an instant, so that we could imprint it, but still cast the sorcery. Unfortunately, a quick search did not find any suitable cards; there were a bunch of cards in which the sorcery had Aftermath, and I think that means that we can't cast it with Elite Arcanist. Other than those, the only other card I found was Spring // Mind - but Mind seems like too good a spell. We could put Spellweaver Volute on it, then we could cast[/c]Acorn Harvest[/c], triggering Deconstruct and Worldpurge, then we could put those cards into the library and draw them again with Mind. So I haven't found a good card to pair with Elite Arcanist.
Elite Arcanist is an excellent idea, but you definitely can't cast aftermath spells with it. We could use it to cast Failure, and repeatedly bounce some sorcery back to hand. That would let us turn 1 token into a new batch of Bloodbond March triggers for any creature in our hand though. It also would break Acorn Harvest, but if we could replace it with a card that, as an additional cost to cast it, requires life... Fumarole?
Another option that I actually made use of in the standard combo at one point was Unconventional Tactics. If we can find a creature which is not a zombie, but creates zombies with a tap, it can tap to return Tactics from our graveyard to our hand, which would let us cast it again. Drana's Chosen would do nicely.
I don't follow why Engineered Explosives doesn't work... Doesn't it revert to a converted Mana cost of 0 when it leaves the stack, so with March out they would all die? Though, now that I think about it, it would also kill all our tokens as well, not just the nontoken....
In other news, while there's a bit more work to do on my new write-up, I'm making my Graham's number combo public, linking it below. I'd appreciate it if you guys could give it a look!
Edit: Unconventional Tactics targets arbitrary creatures, but we can replace it with another sorcery with a trigger that returns it from graveyard to hand. Sosuke's Summons returns only when a nontoken snake enters the battlefield, so any green snake (say, Feiyi Snake) can turn one Eastern Paladin activation into a sorcery cast. Paladin can even conveniently bounce Titania, to rebuy our artifact land.
It does allow holding either the snake or the spell in hand during the transition, but we might be able to work around that.
The procedure is:
For the hyperstage, use Eastern Paladin to bounce snakes, use the discard land trick to remake one during each transition, which as usual deletes all Metallurgeons.
For the megastage, before constructing each megastage transition, you put Bloodbond March triggers on the stack for all our artifacts, enchantments, and creatures: we have plentiful targeting abilities for all of them so I don't think that's an issue. Then we play the Bushwhacker, spending one R to kick it, and get many, many copies of its trigger on the stack, so it looks like:
Each Bushwhacker trigger gives all our Dual Nature copies of the Paladin haste, so we can use them to make another, very large hyperstage. Once we run out of those, we cast Apocalypse, which exiles all our permanents, includig Auntie's Hovel, which can only produce red if we've already bounced Bushwhacker back from exile to our hand. It also discards our hand, so no storing our sorcery. Then, we let the Bloodbond March triggers resolve, rebuilding our state and using leftover colorless to get us back up to the original amount of our enchantments, and more. Lastly, we bounce our Bushwhacker to hand with a lower level's Seismic Assault/psychic Battle trigger, which lets us get back Auntie's Hovel untapped, tapping it for red and rebuilding the next level up.
Gigastage works the same, but we get to discard Seat of the Synod to Gerrard's verdict.
What have I missed?
Edit: actually, I don't think from there we even need a unique sorcery: we can just reuse Apocalypse.
Let's say our hasty token creature for the hyperstage is Snow Hound. We can tap it to get many Psychic Battle triggers, each of which can bounce Titania or Nucklavee. We bounce and replay Nucklavee, getting lots of Dual Nature triggers. Each Dual Nature batch lets us get back Apocalypse once. We play Apocalypse after each one, trigger all our Voluntes, and let it get countered, but don't put a Volute on Rebuild yet. We resolve down our stack of Nucklavees and Psychic Battles, until the last one, where we use rebuild to bounce our artifact land, and discard it to kill Snow Hound. We could do this in between intervening triggers, but since Rebuild bounces Vedalken Orrery, only the very last one will be practical: we won't be able to bounce and replay Nucklavee in between the next Apocalypse and the Seismic Assault activation. We could bank up either one Apocalypse cast by using Seismic Assault to bounce Nucklavee, or make one hasty Snow Hound and get lots and lots of casts. Then, at the bottom, we get back Vedalken Orrery, use a cheap Bloodbond March trigger to get back Snow Hound, and we're good. That means that we only add... 3 more slots?
Things I noticed: If we have both Feiyi Snake and Eastern Paladin, then one activation of Seismic Assault can bounce Feiyi Snake and destroy Eastern Paladin, so we can play Feiyi Snake to get Sosuke's Summons back once, then activate a newly created Eastern Paladin token to bounce Feiyi Snake and play it again.
In the megastage, it looks like we can play Apocalypse, bring back Auntie's Hovel, tap it for a red, then use the Goblin Bushwhacker in the lower hyperstage to extend it. I don't see anything that makes us use Goblin Bushwhacker in the higher hyperstage.
Going double duty with Seat of the Synod seems problematic. We can get the Seat back into our hand cheaply with Rebuild, then forego the casting of Worldpurge while still getting life via Gerrard's Verdict. Without Worldpurge to get rid of all permanents and mana, the gigastage should go infinite.
These problems seem solvable, with the hardest part looking to be the megastage - how do we force Goblin Bushwhacker to be in the higher hyperstage? Usually we do it by having the same ability trigger both the renewing ability and the mass destruction ability. But perhaps there is another way.
Looking forward to reading your Graham's Number article!
Edit: You were right about Engineered Explosives; I didn't realize that X counted as 0 CMC once the card was not on the stack. However, it's still not a suitable replacement for Mox Emerald, since you need to sacrifice it to use it. That means we need some cheap enough way to bring it back to the battlefield. But if we can do that, we can just play the Engineered Explosives with March of the Machines on the battlefield; the Engineered Explosives will be sacrificed, but not before all the Dual Natures trigger. We can then bounce March of the Machines, and the Engineered Explosives tokens will come into play, ready to be used one at a time.
So, I think I've fixed some of the problems there, but not the critical one of being able to return and discard a land without Worldpurge. If we use the Snow Hound/Nucklavee system I described in my edit, it works, but goes infinite because you can just target Nucklavee with the Seismic Assault activations, which let you bounce it, replay it, and use Dual Nature triggers to go infinite. You need a way to target Snow Hound, but not Nucklavee.
I found: Land's Edge, Gideon Jura, and Prismatic Strands, alongside Teferi and The Chain Veil. Gideon can target tapped creatures, but not any other kind, so we need a way to tap the nontoken Snow Hound. Prismatic Strands is a free flashback, letting us tap the nontoken so we can target it with Gideon, to bounce it or kill it as we please. However, Gideon's ability is a minus, so he'll eventually die. Instead, we 0 him into a creature and discard our land to Land's End, targeting the planeswalker. It's a creature, so we bounce it back with Cowardice and replay him. I believe that safely implements a token-based hyperstage. The problem is that it still uses bounce+discard a land... Could we perhaps use a different mechanism than that to gain the life? Or is that unsafe?
I'm also not clear on what the Goblin Bushwhacker issue is, probably because I don't fully understand the ways a hyperstage can go wrong yet. I've been imagine the playing of Goblin Bushwhacker as the hyperstage transition in and of itself: once you play it, each trigger represents another hyperstage above it, and you can't access the ones below until all the triggers have resolved. Could you walk me through how that stack would play out in more detail?
Also, good point re Ajani: this would not be the first time I've missed a word on a card. Thank God it's only for the setup, because I don't think my heart could bear another finding-out-Vault of Catlacan-can-also-tap-for-any-color incident.
The other way we've been gaining life was with lifegain lands; but, currently we are using Apocalypse to exileAuntie's Hovel and bring it back with Titania, so that would get us the lifegain lands as well. Using lands as the benefit card for three different stage levels seems tricky; we may need to switch out one.
The thing with n-stages is that, we need to not be able to hold on to resources from a higher one and go down to a lower one with those resources. Even very cheap resources could be too much; in the current working deck, we can restart the higher n-stage just with some Psychic Battle and a Bloodbond March trigger from Metallurgeon, so even bringing one hasted Metallurgeon from the higher n-stage would be too much. So we look at the ability that gets rid of our resources as the n-stage separator, which would be Apocalypse in this case. We have to spend some resources to cast Apocalypse and then bring back Auntie's Hovel, but I don't think much, so then playing Goblin Bushwhacker and giving all creatures haste would allow us to extend the lower hyperstage with more stages. We don't have to resolve all those stages to repeat the Apocalypse/Auntie's Hovel/Goblin Bushwhacker combo, so we can keep on building.
I don't want to try to write up the stack in great detail right now, so it the hyperstage looks something like
stage
stage
...
stage
We play Apocalypse/Auntie's Hovel/Goblin Bushwhacker, and have
Bushwhacker triggers
stage
stage
...
stage
We resolve one Bushwhacker trigger, and all the new hasted Snow Hounds allow us to create many more stages, so we get
To be honest I think that plan for an ultra stage has a lot of problems. Maybe the most important is that as Deedlit noted there is no connection between Goblin Bushwhacker and Apocalypse.
In our current hyper stage we use the hyperstage resource to begin a chain of events that generates a lot of the resources needed for the stages and at the same puts something on the stack that is later required to lower stage, i.e. get back the hyperstage resource. By doing that we fix the position on the stack where the transition has to happen. At any time we can look at a Psychic Battle trigger on the stack and figure out to which stage it belongs by counting the transitions above it and the hyperstage resources we currently have. The same thing happens with he Megastage.
In contrast to that we can cast the bushwhacker whenever we have a spare red, and generate a red whenever we feel like it by casting the Apocalypse. There is no clear separation between the hyperstages.
In other news, while there's a bit more work to do on my new write-up, I'm making my Graham's number combo public, linking it below. I'd appreciate it if you guys could give it a look!
I thought about adding an energy -> life layer via Ajani Unyieldings -2 on one of your own creatures. But the sorcery speed restriction seems too harsh, since you can't clear all the Silent Gravestone activations from the stack everytime you want to use Ajani.
That said I think I found a major problem. We can gain more life than intended from Paladin of Atonement:
- With 3 Raging Swordtooth triggers on the stack cast Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. (Costs 1 life and uses Muldrotha for creatures)
- Cast a historic spell to bring back the Paladin of Atonement.
- Resolve a Swordtooth trigger to kill Paladin and gain 1 life.
- Cast two more historic spells to bring back Paladin and Legion Lieutenant.
- Cast Cherished Hatchling. Since it is a dinosaur and another instance of it died this turn it gets to fight the Paladin, killing it. We gain 2 life.
- Cast another historic spell to bring the paladin back.
- Resolve another two Swordtooth triggers. This kills more creatures, including the Paladin, which gains us 2 life.
We gained a total of 5 life, for a net gain of 4. We should be able to get the historic spells and the Hatchling back into hand as well as refresh the Muldrotha after a few Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep triggers.
Removing the Legion Lieutenant from the deck would reduce this to 3 life gained, but that is still 1 more than allowed due to the Hatchling's fight clause. We cannot just remove the Hatchling, so this will require some more work.
I haven't really kept up with standard and don't know any of the cards, so I hope you can still find a fix for this.
Ohhhhhhhh.... Crap. Cherished Hatchling's fight ability can target your own creatures. That pretty well scuppers a lot of my work.
You don't even need to gain life with it, I don't think: you can just repeatedly replay it by using a Slinn Voda trigger to reset Muldrotha, pinging it down till it dies without using red Mana. I'd always just read it as "fight target creature an opponent controls" because that's how they always print that effect nowadays.
I do have a backup version that doesn't use Raging Swordtooth , but it closes off Instants/Sorceries, so I'm honestly not sure how to add layers onto it. It's possible that, while it will beat the old vintage deck, it won't beat Graham's Number.
Slinn Voda works like it did before, but this time in order to kill it you need to copy Stinging Shot with Naru Meha. You could use lightning, but that costs more life than just spending 1 to enchant Muldrotha with On Serra's Wings, and using spare Naru Meha triggers to copy Stinging Shot to kill Slinn Voda.
Then, whenever the top stack of Slinn Voda triggers runs out, play Teshar (locking the state), use its ability to reanimate all 4 Paladins and lieutenant, and use 2 Radiating Lightning to kill them all and Teshar, gaining a profit of 2 life, brought down to 1 by the cost of playing Teshar. The next Slinn Voda trigger unlocks the state, and we can replay Naru Meha+Slinn Voda on top to rebuild.
Going back to the main combo, I see the problem, which definitely makes my megastage plan not work so well, but I believe that's a fixable issue. We just need to find some other way to affix a trigger on the stack. For instance, if we could make it so both a Bushwhacker (or whatever creature replaces it, should Bushwhacker not be an option, Village Bell-Ringer seems like a good candidate) trigger, and a hyperstage-level trigger below it, is necessary to generate the red Mana once Apocalypse resolves, then the same border that we use to differentiate between layers in a stage could work for the megastage. Is it possible we could do something in that general mood with Nevinyrral's Disk?
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That way, we could alternate between them. The stage below any given NL layer would not be able to consume the same resource as the stage above it. You could refuel a lower stage, by going another level down, but that would require giving up an entire stage to do it, and I don't think that would be able to go infinite.
Edit: I think the bottom trigger might be the easiest part, in a way: it can be something related to using mimic Vat. Untapping it, say, or generating the generic Mana needed to activate it.
Edit: no, that doesn't work either: we can still bank up the top resources, and just save it as we run through the intervening stage. There has to be a more extensible way to chain these, though.
What if we diffentiated between spending the resource during the stage and building up the stack initially? We'd need a way to make one PB and one BM trigger directly translate into a new stack of PB triggers, rather than making one of the input resource. That way, you can't save input resource from the upper stage to the lower, because you're not actually saving any. It's a /very/ weird structure, but we would probably only have to do it for the stage itself, not for the extensions.
EDIT: Well, the input resource is what allows us to build the stack back up when we go more than 2 layers down; as we resolve the top layers, we build up the input resource, which allows us to rebuild the stack up to the exact same number of layers each time. I don't know how we would do that without some quantity to indicate how much we can build back up.
But, if you do have a way so that we don't need this for the extensions, then maybe it could be okay that the first "stage" is only a layer or two.
The initial stage is by far the hardest part of this: I don't think the problem lijil find applies to the extensions. There's no point where you have to generate one resource in the middle of generating another one and resetting the state.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the problem Iijil pointed out is present in all stage types; for the hyperstage, we have to resolve arbitrarily many stages down, and we need to be able to build all the way back up to the original number of stages. So we need some resource to keep track of that number. But, if we can carry over that resource from a higher hyperstage, we won't be able to distinguish between the those resources and the ones from the current hyperstage.
I guess what we could do is start with a deletion-based hyperstage, and then try to build extensions on top of that: because we're only ever using the same bottom trigger for each new extension, and that trigger is eventually generated by the same resource, we'd only need a way to use one delete-all-I for every hyperstage and beyond, right?
It wasn't something that would help with the ongoing deck so I wasn't in a rush to mention it, but it is a card that could be used to convert an indefinite amount of resources into a different resources, but only in discrete packets.
Mirror in my standard megacombo for a while: you'd top up on alternating triggers between targeting Treasure Map and a creature you can untap with Rallying Roar, then blinking it with Aethergeode Miner to turn just 2 energy into a lot of Mana of any color. I had to drop it when I switched to Cogwork Assembler because letting it make copies of any permanent is super unsafe.
Yeah, it seems like my approach to an extensible n-stage framework may not be tenable. I still believe there's a better way than to force delete all of a resource, but for in the meantime, your configuration is probably still the best.
In the meantime, I would love to hear any ideas you have to improve our current deck. Right now it stands at:
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 Dual Nature
14 Copy Enchantment
15 Allay
16 Su-Chi
17 Farrelite Priest
18 Metallurgeon
19 Deep Reconnaissance
20 Battle Cry
21 Rebuild
22 Spellweaver Volute
23 Mox Emerald
25 Vile Redeemer
26 Deconstruct
27 Swarm Intelligence
28 Worldpurge
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Acorn Harvest
31 Spellweaver Helix
32 Panharmonicon
33 Gerrard's Verdict
34 Island
35 Judge of Currents
36 Merfolk Sovereign
37 Aquatic Incursion
38 Natural Affinity
39 Goblin Gardener
40 Mad Auntie
41 Facevaulter
42 Basal Thrull
43 Thrull Champion
45 Everglove Courier
46 Nectar Faerie
47 Ghosthelm Courier
48 Possessed Aven
49 Centaur Archer
50 Maze Glider
51 Possessed Centaur
52 Eastern Paladin
53 Frightshroud Courier
54 Dwarven Warriors
55 Possessed Barbarian
56 Minion of Tevesh Szat
57 Goblin Bushwhacker
58 Genesis Wave
59 Channel
60 Black Lotus
I don't know if you have read the rest of the thread yet, but feel free to ask us about anything. As you suspected, the megastage creates a series of hyperstages using the same method with which the hyperstage creates a series of stages. This time with life as the resource; We spend 3 life to flashback Acorn Harvest, triggering Spellweaver Helix to cast Deconstruct, Worldpurge and Gerrard's Verdict. (We can imprint four sorceries thanks to Panharmonicon.) Deconstruct gets lots of green mana to create a large hyperstage; Worldpurge brings the Island back to our hand, so that we can discard it with Gerrard's Verdict to get the 3 life back. But the Worldpurge will eliminate all permanents and all mana in our mana pool.
If we can't make the extensible n-stage idea work, the best that we can hope for is to create a gigastage or an additional megastage/hyperstage the hard way. I posted some thoughts at:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/615089-most-turn-1-damage-in-a-deck-with-no-infinite?comment=1210
but we weren't able to develop the ideas any further.
My first thought is that we're constantly making bajilions of useless token copies of our tap creatures with Dual Nature. That means that mass-haste-granting abilities can generate lots of untapped hasty tokens, as well as untap effects. If we could set up an interventing delete-all-I stage before the life megastage, based on giving creatures haste, that could bump what we already have up to a gigastage. Something like:
Input resource 1 red mana
Output resource: lots of hasty copies of a creature that can tap to cast a sorcery (need not be deep reconnaissance) for free. We would have to change around the original hyperstage to use this token instead of green Mana, and I'm not entirely sure how.
Goblin Bushwhacker, to let us turn 1 red Mana into X triggers that would each give all our not-hasty Dual Nature token copies of the above creature haste, to create a new hyperstage.
A way to bounce Goblin Bushwhacker and our red-producer, almost certainly Simian Spirit Guide, as well as all our tokens, to hand. Engulf the Shore seems like a good choice, as long as we can get 2 and only 2 islands down, and our linking creature has 2 or fewer toughness.
From there, we can just replace Deconstruct with Rite of Flame, and I think we'd have a gigastage. All that's left is to find a creature which can tap to give us a sorcery cast. I think that, if we could find a sorcery that we could cheaply draw from library, without allowing us to draw any cards from higher up the chain, we could use Deathrite Shaman as the chaining creature: we would need to keep green Mana unavailable to preserve the current megastage, and prevent the killing of lands, and allow for black Mana production, but we could use its ability to exile some sorcery, use a Mirror to reshuffle it, and then redraw the sorcery somehow. We could do it by limiting color, for instance.
So, my initial idea would look like:
Bog Initiate
Deathrite Shaman
Engulf the Shore (we can counter it normally, then exile/draw it with Deathrite, making it both our Volute trigger and our delete-all-I generator later on)
Tezzeret's Gatebreaker (it's an M19 artifact that, on ETB, lets us grab a blue card from the library, not sure if we can card it)
Goblin Bushwhacker
Simian Spirit Guide
Additionally, we could remove Deep Reconnaissance, and would have to replace Mox Emerald with... Engineered Explosives? That's the hardest part: we need an artifact, where we can't make tokens or the tokend are useless, that we can reuse with Rebuild to kill Deathrite Shaman, putting it on Mimic Vat.
Edit: could we maybe allow the storing of Mana, where the Mana can be used to kill Deathrite Shaman? Then we could use Mox Sapphire as the rebuild target, and use it to pay for the ability on something like Escape Routes, Homarid Shaman, or King Crab, to kill Deathrite with Horobi and then put it on the Vat.
We also need to make sure the next hyperstage down is actually necessary to keep the combo going, so we have to use up a trigger from below for... Something. There's still a ways to go before it can be slotted in.
Deathrite feels hard to replace...
Edit: Tezzeret's Gatebreaker also grabs an artifact, which means we can use a Psychic Battle trigger to kill Metallurgeon, imprint it on the Vat, make a hasty token, shuffle it back in, use the next psychic Battle trigger to bounce and replay Gatebreaker, use the trigger to get Metallurgeon, and replay Metallurgeon without using up a Bloodbond March trigger. No good. That and the Helix pretty conclusively rules out Deathrite as an option.
So, our creature needs to have: 2 or fewer toughness ideally (we could go higher, at the cost of reducing space for further layers later on), a tap ability that lets us, in some way, recast a sorcery to trigger Volute, and some search space we can hit with Rebuild.
Maybe Hana Kami, Kodama's Reach, and a Kitsune Diviner?
So far, the way we have been requiring the trigger from below is that we need some generic mana to be able to imprint our sorceries, or put our instants back in the graveyard. We specifically set things up so that we need an artifact targeting to get cheap mana (that is the reason for Su-Chi, rather than a more convenient Tooth of Ramos), and at the end of a stage or hyperstage all the Metallurgeons are cleared, so we need to resolve some Psychic Battle triggers from Metallurgeon and target Su-Chi. In other words, we make the trigger from below necessary to set our board back up again.
Edit: Recycling a sorcery arcane is a great way to distinguish between the Spellweaver Volute sorcery and the Spellweaver Helix one. But, I just noticed something: Our usual n-stage method is to spend an n-stage resource to trigger both an ability that creates lots of n-1 stage resources, and an ability that destroys all of those resources to get back the n-stage resource. With the latest combo, we are spending the n-stage resource trigger the first ability, and that first ability creates lots of hasted Kitsune Diviners, each of which can be used to trigger the second ability. Right now, I'm not seeing an infinite, since once we exile Simian Spirit Guide, we need to wait until the next Bloodbond March trigger is resolved to bring it back to the battlefield, but still the independence and multiplicity of that second trigger worry me just a little. Iijil, do you see any problem?
Could we potentially use Mob Rule? If we cut Swarm Intelligence (we'd need some other way to make our R sorcery scale, Precursor Golem+something, who knows), we could make it so we /need/ to play it and choose the mode we want, which wouldn't untap or grant haste to our Metallurgeons. Then we'd need to use the next Psychic Battle trigger down to kill Metallurgeon and get a hasted token.
Edit: if we have to wait until the next "target spirit" trigger, isn't that no longer a megastage? We only get to rebuild our hyperstage transition by using up a trigger from the next transition down, giving us either another stage or another hyperstage, I'm not sure which.
Edit: ...yes, it does.
Note that Engineered Explosives currently doesn't work, since we can cast it for positive mana with March of the Machines in play, and we will get lots of usable copies.
Edit: I just noticed your question about waiting for the next "target spirit" trigger. To recreate an n-stage, we can actually spend quite a lot, including any m-stage resource for m less than n. For example, if we had to spend an n-1-stage resource, then the next n-1-stage down would resolve after just X recreations of the higher n-stage. But, then the next n-1-stage below that top n-1-stage would be able to recreate the top n-1-stage with a higher X, and since we are assuming that the n-stage works properly, we can recreate the top-n-1-stage a bajillion times with acceptable cost. We can even resolve the entire top n-1-stage to recreate the higher n-stage, so long as we can recreate the top n-1-stage with the next n-1-stage down. But, we cannot spend an n-stage resource, since that will shrink our series of n-1-stages by one each time and we will resolve the lower n-stage after just X iterations.
In your case, spending a psychic battle trigger isn't going to be too much, since it isn't going to be an n-stage resource.
Edit: So, let's focus on the hyperstage to start with. It doesn't look like we have the correct hyperstage creature yet; Deathrite Shaman doesn't work because Spellweaver Helix can also exile a sorcery. Kitsune Diviner doesn't seem to work because one tap can create many Hana Kamis, each of which can bring back many arcane sorceries. We could perhaps use Hana Kami as our hyperstage creature directly, if we can find a way to have to hyperstage transition create exactly one more Hana Kami, hasted or unhasted.
That brings us to the other problem: How do we make Rebuild allow us to have exactly one more hyperstage creature? Rebuild affects artifacts, but Metallurgeon can only bring artifact creatures to our hand. So either we need to get rid of March of the Machines, or else use some artifact that can't be turned into a creature, like a 0 CMC artifact. But, there aren't that many useful 0 CMC artifacts. Using a Mox to generate mana, and then using the mana to create a creature, is dangerous because of the possibility of holding on to the generated mana in the megastage transition. Herbal Poultice and Delif's Cone can target arbitrary creatures, but they need to be sacrificed to do so, so Rebuild can't bring them back to our hand after. If we make a cheap way to bring an artifact back from the graveyard to our hand or the battlefield, then we won't need Rebuild. (It's too bad that Unstable cards aren't legal, there are a whole bunch of cards we could use then!)
One idea I had: Use an artifact land, then use an ability that discards a land from our hand, like Seismic Assault. Then, we only need a way to bring back a land from the graveyard to the battlefield; if there is nothing better, Titania, Protector of Argoth and Evacuation should do. I think that works.
But, we still need a hyperstage creature. Dralnu, Lich Lord is an idea, but it allows us to cast Acorn Harvest with just green mana, which is bad. What about Elite Arcanist? It could be coupled with a split card that has both a sorcery and an instant, so that we could imprint it, but still cast the sorcery. Unfortunately, a quick search did not find any suitable cards; there were a bunch of cards in which the sorcery had Aftermath, and I think that means that we can't cast it with Elite Arcanist. Other than those, the only other card I found was Spring // Mind - but Mind seems like too good a spell. We could put Spellweaver Volute on it, then we could cast[/c]Acorn Harvest[/c], triggering Deconstruct and Worldpurge, then we could put those cards into the library and draw them again with Mind. So I haven't found a good card to pair with Elite Arcanist.
Another option that I actually made use of in the standard combo at one point was Unconventional Tactics. If we can find a creature which is not a zombie, but creates zombies with a tap, it can tap to return Tactics from our graveyard to our hand, which would let us cast it again. Drana's Chosen would do nicely.
I don't follow why Engineered Explosives doesn't work... Doesn't it revert to a converted Mana cost of 0 when it leaves the stack, so with March out they would all die? Though, now that I think about it, it would also kill all our tokens as well, not just the nontoken....
In other news, while there's a bit more work to do on my new write-up, I'm making my Graham's number combo public, linking it below. I'd appreciate it if you guys could give it a look!
http://alex.shankland.org/index.php/2018/06/13/how-to-deal-more-than-grahams-number-damage-in-magic-the-gathering/
Edit: Unconventional Tactics targets arbitrary creatures, but we can replace it with another sorcery with a trigger that returns it from graveyard to hand. Sosuke's Summons returns only when a nontoken snake enters the battlefield, so any green snake (say, Feiyi Snake) can turn one Eastern Paladin activation into a sorcery cast. Paladin can even conveniently bounce Titania, to rebuy our artifact land.
It does allow holding either the snake or the spell in hand during the transition, but we might be able to work around that.
Edit: okay, can I get a sanity check on this:
Same initial setup
Bottom level:
Allay
Su-chi
Farrelite Priest
Bog Initiate
Hyperstage:
Metallurgeon
Battle Cry
Rebuild
Seat of the Synod
Seismic Assault
Spellweaver Volute
Feiyi Snake
Sosuke's Summons
Titania, Protector of Argoth
Megastage (red mana->hyperstages)
Goblin Bushwhacker
Apocalypse
Panharmonicon
Auntie's Hovel
Nucklavee
Gigastage:
Same as before, but Rite of Flame over Deconstruct and cut Island, since Seat of the Synod can double up for here and the hyperstage.
The procedure is:
For the hyperstage, use Eastern Paladin to bounce snakes, use the discard land trick to remake one during each transition, which as usual deletes all Metallurgeons.
For the megastage, before constructing each megastage transition, you put Bloodbond March triggers on the stack for all our artifacts, enchantments, and creatures: we have plentiful targeting abilities for all of them so I don't think that's an issue. Then we play the Bushwhacker, spending one R to kick it, and get many, many copies of its trigger on the stack, so it looks like:
Upper hyperstage
Goblin Bushwhacker triggers
Various Bloodbond March triggers to reconstruct our state
Lower hyperstage
Each Bushwhacker trigger gives all our Dual Nature copies of the Paladin haste, so we can use them to make another, very large hyperstage. Once we run out of those, we cast Apocalypse, which exiles all our permanents, includig Auntie's Hovel, which can only produce red if we've already bounced Bushwhacker back from exile to our hand. It also discards our hand, so no storing our sorcery. Then, we let the Bloodbond March triggers resolve, rebuilding our state and using leftover colorless to get us back up to the original amount of our enchantments, and more. Lastly, we bounce our Bushwhacker to hand with a lower level's Seismic Assault/psychic Battle trigger, which lets us get back Auntie's Hovel untapped, tapping it for red and rebuilding the next level up.
Gigastage works the same, but we get to discard Seat of the Synod to Gerrard's verdict.
What have I missed?
Edit: actually, I don't think from there we even need a unique sorcery: we can just reuse Apocalypse.
Let's say our hasty token creature for the hyperstage is Snow Hound. We can tap it to get many Psychic Battle triggers, each of which can bounce Titania or Nucklavee. We bounce and replay Nucklavee, getting lots of Dual Nature triggers. Each Dual Nature batch lets us get back Apocalypse once. We play Apocalypse after each one, trigger all our Voluntes, and let it get countered, but don't put a Volute on Rebuild yet. We resolve down our stack of Nucklavees and Psychic Battles, until the last one, where we use rebuild to bounce our artifact land, and discard it to kill Snow Hound. We could do this in between intervening triggers, but since Rebuild bounces Vedalken Orrery, only the very last one will be practical: we won't be able to bounce and replay Nucklavee in between the next Apocalypse and the Seismic Assault activation. We could bank up either one Apocalypse cast by using Seismic Assault to bounce Nucklavee, or make one hasty Snow Hound and get lots and lots of casts. Then, at the bottom, we get back Vedalken Orrery, use a cheap Bloodbond March trigger to get back Snow Hound, and we're good. That means that we only add... 3 more slots?
Things I noticed: If we have both Feiyi Snake and Eastern Paladin, then one activation of Seismic Assault can bounce Feiyi Snake and destroy Eastern Paladin, so we can play Feiyi Snake to get Sosuke's Summons back once, then activate a newly created Eastern Paladin token to bounce Feiyi Snake and play it again.
In the megastage, it looks like we can play Apocalypse, bring back Auntie's Hovel, tap it for a red, then use the Goblin Bushwhacker in the lower hyperstage to extend it. I don't see anything that makes us use Goblin Bushwhacker in the higher hyperstage.
Going double duty with Seat of the Synod seems problematic. We can get the Seat back into our hand cheaply with Rebuild, then forego the casting of Worldpurge while still getting life via Gerrard's Verdict. Without Worldpurge to get rid of all permanents and mana, the gigastage should go infinite.
These problems seem solvable, with the hardest part looking to be the megastage - how do we force Goblin Bushwhacker to be in the higher hyperstage? Usually we do it by having the same ability trigger both the renewing ability and the mass destruction ability. But perhaps there is another way.
Looking forward to reading your Graham's Number article!
Edit: You were right about Engineered Explosives; I didn't realize that X counted as 0 CMC once the card was not on the stack. However, it's still not a suitable replacement for Mox Emerald, since you need to sacrifice it to use it. That means we need some cheap enough way to bring it back to the battlefield. But if we can do that, we can just play the Engineered Explosives with March of the Machines on the battlefield; the Engineered Explosives will be sacrificed, but not before all the Dual Natures trigger. We can then bounce March of the Machines, and the Engineered Explosives tokens will come into play, ready to be used one at a time.
Edit: It looks like Ajani Unyielding's +2 ability only puts nonland permanents into your hand, so you wouldn't get Spire of Industry and Unclaimed Territory?
I found: Land's Edge, Gideon Jura, and Prismatic Strands, alongside Teferi and The Chain Veil. Gideon can target tapped creatures, but not any other kind, so we need a way to tap the nontoken Snow Hound. Prismatic Strands is a free flashback, letting us tap the nontoken so we can target it with Gideon, to bounce it or kill it as we please. However, Gideon's ability is a minus, so he'll eventually die. Instead, we 0 him into a creature and discard our land to Land's End, targeting the planeswalker. It's a creature, so we bounce it back with Cowardice and replay him. I believe that safely implements a token-based hyperstage. The problem is that it still uses bounce+discard a land... Could we perhaps use a different mechanism than that to gain the life? Or is that unsafe?
I'm also not clear on what the Goblin Bushwhacker issue is, probably because I don't fully understand the ways a hyperstage can go wrong yet. I've been imagine the playing of Goblin Bushwhacker as the hyperstage transition in and of itself: once you play it, each trigger represents another hyperstage above it, and you can't access the ones below until all the triggers have resolved. Could you walk me through how that stack would play out in more detail?
Also, good point re Ajani: this would not be the first time I've missed a word on a card. Thank God it's only for the setup, because I don't think my heart could bear another finding-out-Vault of Catlacan-can-also-tap-for-any-color incident.
The thing with n-stages is that, we need to not be able to hold on to resources from a higher one and go down to a lower one with those resources. Even very cheap resources could be too much; in the current working deck, we can restart the higher n-stage just with some Psychic Battle and a Bloodbond March trigger from Metallurgeon, so even bringing one hasted Metallurgeon from the higher n-stage would be too much. So we look at the ability that gets rid of our resources as the n-stage separator, which would be Apocalypse in this case. We have to spend some resources to cast Apocalypse and then bring back Auntie's Hovel, but I don't think much, so then playing Goblin Bushwhacker and giving all creatures haste would allow us to extend the lower hyperstage with more stages. We don't have to resolve all those stages to repeat the Apocalypse/Auntie's Hovel/Goblin Bushwhacker combo, so we can keep on building.
I don't want to try to write up the stack in great detail right now, so it the hyperstage looks something like
stage
stage
...
stage
We play Apocalypse/Auntie's Hovel/Goblin Bushwhacker, and have
Bushwhacker triggers
stage
stage
...
stage
We resolve one Bushwhacker trigger, and all the new hasted Snow Hounds allow us to create many more stages, so we get
stage
stage
...
stage
Bushwhacker triggers
stage
stage
...
stage
and then we can do the combo again, where each time the cost is less than a stage I would think.
In our current hyper stage we use the hyperstage resource to begin a chain of events that generates a lot of the resources needed for the stages and at the same puts something on the stack that is later required to lower stage, i.e. get back the hyperstage resource. By doing that we fix the position on the stack where the transition has to happen. At any time we can look at a Psychic Battle trigger on the stack and figure out to which stage it belongs by counting the transitions above it and the hyperstage resources we currently have. The same thing happens with he Megastage.
In contrast to that we can cast the bushwhacker whenever we have a spare red, and generate a red whenever we feel like it by casting the Apocalypse. There is no clear separation between the hyperstages.
That is a great combo. Using Muldrotha, the Gravetide like you do is an amazing idea!
I thought about adding an energy -> life layer via Ajani Unyieldings -2 on one of your own creatures. But the sorcery speed restriction seems too harsh, since you can't clear all the Silent Gravestone activations from the stack everytime you want to use Ajani.
That said I think I found a major problem. We can gain more life than intended from Paladin of Atonement:
- With 3 Raging Swordtooth triggers on the stack cast Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. (Costs 1 life and uses Muldrotha for creatures)
- Cast a historic spell to bring back the Paladin of Atonement.
- Resolve a Swordtooth trigger to kill Paladin and gain 1 life.
- Cast two more historic spells to bring back Paladin and Legion Lieutenant.
- Cast Cherished Hatchling. Since it is a dinosaur and another instance of it died this turn it gets to fight the Paladin, killing it. We gain 2 life.
- Cast another historic spell to bring the paladin back.
- Resolve another two Swordtooth triggers. This kills more creatures, including the Paladin, which gains us 2 life.
We gained a total of 5 life, for a net gain of 4. We should be able to get the historic spells and the Hatchling back into hand as well as refresh the Muldrotha after a few Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep triggers.
Removing the Legion Lieutenant from the deck would reduce this to 3 life gained, but that is still 1 more than allowed due to the Hatchling's fight clause. We cannot just remove the Hatchling, so this will require some more work.
I haven't really kept up with standard and don't know any of the cards, so I hope you can still find a fix for this.
You don't even need to gain life with it, I don't think: you can just repeatedly replay it by using a Slinn Voda trigger to reset Muldrotha, pinging it down till it dies without using red Mana. I'd always just read it as "fight target creature an opponent controls" because that's how they always print that effect nowadays.
I do have a backup version that doesn't use Raging Swordtooth , but it closes off Instants/Sorceries, so I'm honestly not sure how to add layers onto it. It's possible that, while it will beat the old vintage deck, it won't beat Graham's Number.
I don't know if it still matters, but Muldrotha, the Gravetide can only be used during your turn.
Cut Cherished Hatchling's and Raging Swordtooth, replace them with On Serra's Wings and Stinging Shot. Also, add a Radiating Lightning, and go up to 4 paladins.
Slinn Voda works like it did before, but this time in order to kill it you need to copy Stinging Shot with Naru Meha. You could use lightning, but that costs more life than just spending 1 to enchant Muldrotha with On Serra's Wings, and using spare Naru Meha triggers to copy Stinging Shot to kill Slinn Voda.
Then, whenever the top stack of Slinn Voda triggers runs out, play Teshar (locking the state), use its ability to reanimate all 4 Paladins and lieutenant, and use 2 Radiating Lightning to kill them all and Teshar, gaining a profit of 2 life, brought down to 1 by the cost of playing Teshar. The next Slinn Voda trigger unlocks the state, and we can replay Naru Meha+Slinn Voda on top to rebuild.
Going back to the main combo, I see the problem, which definitely makes my megastage plan not work so well, but I believe that's a fixable issue. We just need to find some other way to affix a trigger on the stack. For instance, if we could make it so both a Bushwhacker (or whatever creature replaces it, should Bushwhacker not be an option, Village Bell-Ringer seems like a good candidate) trigger, and a hyperstage-level trigger below it, is necessary to generate the red Mana once Apocalypse resolves, then the same border that we use to differentiate between layers in a stage could work for the megastage. Is it possible we could do something in that general mood with Nevinyrral's Disk?