It looks good to me, although of course we should await Iijil's assessment.
Is there a reason why you don't add three more Baffling Ends to increase the final damage? I'm not sure how tight the deck is in terms of card slots - there are some cards that you can give up, like the Annointed Processions and the Yargle, but I don't know what changes are needed to correct for Ajani Unyielding and Muldrotha, the Gravetide.
Concerning the Vintage combo: Yes, the solution seems to be using triggered abilities to connect abilities together. What we have used so far is to have the same action (casting a sorcery) trigger both the beneficial and destructive abilities for the n-stage. I believe what we could also do is have one ability trigger the other. For example, we could activate/cast the destructive ability, and have the activation/casting trigger the beneficial ability; note that it would have to be triggered on activation rather than resolution, so that the beneficial ability goes on top. Or, we could activate/cast the beneficial ability, and have the resolution of the beneficial ability trigger the destructive ability. I think that could also work.
So, perhaps something like activating Village Bell-Ringer, and have the untapping cause something that will allow a destructive spell to be cast, maybe with an Inspired ability? It doesn't look like we can just use the ability of an untapped creature to cast the destructive spell, like Nevinyrral's Disk or perhaps Dralnu, Lich Lord; unfortunately, if it isn't triggered, we can use our untapped creatures to build up the lower hyperstage, then cast the spell to transition to the higher hyperstage, which is no good. So we need Bushwhacker's ability or Village Bell-Ringer's ability to trigger something. But what?
Edit: @Iijil, could you describe your energy to life layer? Even if it messes up the use of Silent Gravestone, it could lead to greater damage some other way.
At a quick glance, it doesn't look like we need red mana for the main combo, outside of Humans. Onward // Victory need only be cast once, and Bloodwater Entity we only need to redraw our instants/sorceries. So perhaps we could get rid of Spire of Industry and Aether Hub, and add Shefet Dunes. Then we could perhaps have:
pay N energy to gain X life: X to 3 -> 3 -> X
cast an instant/sorcery to gain X energy: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 2
pay 1 red mana to kick Ghitu Chronicler: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 3
attack with Grand Warlord Radha: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 4
Actually, can I get a sanity check on this new version?
This version doesn't seem to work. The Problem is that you can put Naru Meha, Master Wizard triggers on the stack without paying white if you don't want to use them to kill off Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep. So you play Slinn Voda once to gain a bunch of triggers and then can use every single one of the triggers to generate 1 life each by playing Naru Meha and not bothering with On Serra's Wings. When we run out of Slinn Voda triggers we have generated more than enough life to pay for the enchantment once and kill off Slinn Voda in order to do it again.
A minor problem I also noted: Legion Lieutenant would need to be cut as well, otherwise we can kill off one round of unbuffed Paladin of Atonements, bring them back, buff them and kill them off again. The Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle dies one Radiating Lightning earlier than the Paladins, but that doesn't matter and we have a net gain of 2 life.
It seems like Compulsory Rest could be used for rule 5. From the graveyard, we can cast a creature and Compulsory Rest, costing one life and locking the state. The we can sacrifice the creature, gaining two life for a net gain of one.
Edit: I guess we could sacrifice Slinn Voda, which would be no good.
Edit: I just realized we need flash for all our permanents, and only historic spells get those. That's really restrictive.
Edit: Just throwing out ideas: We can perhaps use Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle for our trigger A. We could use Teshar to retrieve two to four Fan Bearers, which can tap Slinn Voda. Then we can use play Naru Meha to copy Take Vengeance and destroy the Slinn Voda. If we have the ability to discard, (say with Chromium, the Mutable) then we can use a Slinn Voda trigger to bring everything back to our hand, discard the Fan Bearers, and then cast Teshar to get the Fan Bearers again. So only the Slinn Voda triggers would get us layers, but that's fine. The problem is how to get our mana/life back; if we just add an Paladin of Atonement it appears that things go infinite.
Welcome to my world... The lack of a Vedalken Orrery effect in standard is the most restrictive part of the whole thing, and symptomatic of the difference between the challenges: in standard, it is much more about making due with what few cards are in the format, rather than trying to find the absolute perfect fit. No Vedalken Orrery, no Cowardice, /very/ limited ability to scale different effects, etc.
With that said, I don't think you can as easily gain life that way with Teshar: Radiating Lightning also damages Teshar itself, so it would die pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure you can only profit a total of 2 life off a single Teshar cast, after which you will need to unlock the state again. 1 of that life has to pay for Teshar, leaving only 1 more life to work with. It's the same trick as with Raging Swordtooth.
The Ajani life layer, assuming it works like the one I tried to get working and failed, works by: play Ajani, pump a creature a ton with Onward, and minus Ajani to gain that much life. Once you resolve Ajani to activate him, the only way to reset him is to kill him, and the only way to do that is by spending 5 energy on a Dynavolt Tower activation. The problem is that we have no EDH Teferi in standard, so loyalty abilities are sorcery speed: even if you could build a draw layer on top of it, you'd have to resolve and redraw your Instants between each activation.
I evaluated the possibility of an energy->life layer, by using Shefet Dunes to turn life into white Mana, and tie red Mana to energy. I used Firesong and Sunspeaker to give red spells lifelink, where the only spell it touched was {c]Magma Spray[/c], which is safe to copy with Naru Meha cause you can't kill Slinn Voda with it: it'll exile the creature and fizzle the combo. You can do this as long as F&S are on the battlefield, but Slinn Voda bounces them and you'll have to pay another red to replay them. The problem is that it goes infinite with Radiating Lightning. If only Heaven//Earth didn't have that aftermath effect....
Also, re spare slots: generally speaking, standard doesn't have enough cards for every card in the deck to serve a purpose: usually, you run out of layers to add before you run out of cards. As a result, I usually feel pretty comfortable adding extra cards to make the setup more convenient and the math simpler to understand, because even if we can get more value with 3 more Baffling Ends, it won't change our total approximation (remember: we can only play Baffling End and activate Ajani at sorcery speed, so each one would only at most double our opponents life total from the last one, not enough to add more runs to that layer). The converse is that you basically don't have to worry about fitting all the cards in: there's always a spare Anointed Procession or setup card you can cut, if you have to.
I think Iijil is correct; you can only get 1 net life for each Teshar cast, but you can get a Teshar cast for every Slinn Voda trigger, since it will bounce both Muldrotha and Naru Meha, allowing us to do the whole thing again. So one destruction of Slinn Voda will result in a gajillion life gained, and us paying out one more life for the destruction won't balance things out.
I think the difference with Raging Swordtooth is that Raging Swordtooth required a life to cast, while Naru Meha does not.
Edit: What's the problem with Heaven // Earth's aftermath effect? I would think you could just keep it on the stack and copy it with Naru Meha. We couldn't use the combat phases, it would be worth it to get an extra layer.
Edit: Some thoughts on how to connect triggers in the Vintage combo: We can create a face down card, then turn it over, triggering two abilities. (Maybe one from that card and one from another card that triggers on any permanent turning face up)
Or, use a Spirit or Arcane spell to trigger one of those abilities. Problem: Arcane spells will have been mooted by the Spellweaver stages, except for X spells, of which there are few.
Ahhh, yeah that would be an issue wouldn't it. You can bank up life in unfair ways.
The problem with Heaven//Earth is that you can play the aftermath, copy it with Naru Meha, and use the aftermath to kill Slinn Voda without giving it flying. You don't even need to pay life. If we could force another sorcery to be on the stack, though, so you couldn't go off at all without closing off the ability to play the aftermath....
On the vintage combo, I've actually found what I think is a much safer way to turn a creature tap into a sorcery, one that even allows for Engineered Explosives over discarding lands: Spell Queller.
The principle is that we have a sorcery with cmc<5 (I'm using Proclamation of Rebirth for other reasons), Spell Queller, and a creature that can target it. I'm using Skyshroud Archer. We cast our sorcery once to get a layer above our stage like usual, but instead of letting Proclamation resolve, we play Spell Queller and exile it. Then, we can tap an Archer to bounce Spell Queller at any time, letting us immediately cast Proclamation for free. Critically, we can't wait on this: casting it is part of resolving Queller's trigger, so we can't put anything underneath between activations.
We go through the stage this way, but once we start to run low on Archer activations on the stack, bounce March of the Machines and use Salvaging Station to get back Engineered Explosives. Rebuild then bounces the Explosives, and we pay {w} to play it for x=1. Note that token copies can only destroy 0-cmc cards and are therefore useless, and that since we only have white Mana at this stage, we can't play it for higher values of X to kill unsafe things like Metallurgeon.
We can then activate Explosives to kill the nontoken Archer (to prevent this from killing the tokens we have banked up, they'll need to get Indestructible: I don't think a global indestructible granting effect like Make a Stand would break anything, but I could easily be wrong), and put it on Mimic Vat. we make another hasty token, make an Orrery like in the old hyperstage, and as a last step replay Spell Queller to exile the Proclamation.
From there, Archer is stuck in the graveyard, and we have no way to target it to get Bloodbond March triggers earlier to buy it back. But the next time we bounce Spell Queller, we can get Swarm Intelligence copies of Proclamation, and use one of them to bring back the nontoken Archer.
This breaks a different part of the mega (giga?) Stage, because all the Sorceries that flashback by paying 3 life can be exiled with Spell Queller, but finding a new way to make 3 life part of the cost of casting a sorcery seems a lot easier than finding a new way to turn Worldpurge resolving into 3 life. I'm pretty sure saving a color of Mana for the gigastage and generating it with Tarnished Citadel does it. The other Advantage, compared to either Land's Edge or Seismic Assault, is that it closes off way less space later on: only fliers and creatures with cmc<=the number of colors of Mana which are plentiful at that layer.
I'm not sure how to then put the megastage together: one thought I had was Obliterate and Unwind, which can be cast with Volute but will only have a target that won't sink the combo if Obliterate is on the stack. The problem is that, as a destroy effect, anything that saves tokens from Explosives also saves them from Obliterate, so it won't actually delete all tokens. It's possible there's a better way to turn Explosives for 1 into an untapped hasty token (a death trigger?), but for now I think this is a much cleaner way to implement a token hyperstage.
Very interesting stuff! That looks like a nice token hyperstage. The next step is the megastage, which unfortunately looks like the hardest part of putting the gigastage combo together. We need to somehow have one of the beneficial ability/destruction ability trigger the other, or having some ability that triggers them both. What sort of actions have a lot of things that trigger on those actions?
The obvious way to get around indestructibility would be to exile everything. Apocalypse seems to severe, as it would get rid of our hand, and I'm not sure how we would get all our permanents back. Perhaps Dimensional Breach? So what can trigger this plus something else - I was thinking about Mischievous Quanar, which will copy a sorcery or instant when turned face up, but I'm not sure what beneficial ability to link this with. Secret Plans will draw a card, but we can't have something that we can delay. I was thinking about Aven Farseer, which would collect +1/+1 counters, and then we could cast something that would transfer the counters to Skyshroud Archers, and then we could enchant them with Sinking Feelings... but, Sinking Feeling is no good with Metallurgeon since it has more than 1 toughness, and so does any artifact creature alternative. (Coretapper is almost good, but it can sacrifice itself.) Bah, this line of thinking is really not working out.
Tarnished Citadel could work, but it can't be paired with lifelands, since if we can recycle the Tarnished citadel to provide the mana whenever we want to cast the sorcery, we can also recycle the lifelands to get the life back at the same time. So it would have to go with Gerrard's Verdict. Which could work, but then we couldn't have any other lands... which means we can't have lands provide mana at the megastage level. That's a shame. The Fumarole idea seems like a good one as well.
An alternative to consider is using Worldfire at the gigastage level rather than Worldpurge. Then, the megastage would be fueled by life, and the gigastage by mana, rather than the other way around.
Another thing to consider is maybe using our Spellweaver Helix up at the megastage, and then have the gigastage use... X spells? But, I don't know how we cut off life or mana other than with Worldfire or Worldpurge, so maybe this won't work.
Edit: On second thought, I don't think this token hyperstage works. We can tap a hasted Skyshroud Archer token to bounce Spell Queller, causing Proclamation of Rebirth to be cast, getting lots of Swarm Intelligence copies, and various Spellweaver Volute triggers, including for Rebuild. We can use Rebuild to bounce Engineered Explosives back to our hand and cast it with one charge counter. Sacrifice it to destroy the nontoken Skyshroud Archer, and imprint it on a Mimic Vat, creating a hasted token copy. Do various things to bring the Skyshroud Archer back to the graveyard, then resolve a Proclamation of Rebirth copy to bring it back to the battlefield. Use Salvaging Station to bring Engineered Explosives back to the battlefield as well, and replay Spell Queller to exile the original Proclamation of Rebirth. We are back to our starting point, and we didn't have to use anything currently on the stack, so we can do this forever.
Re-edit: Oops, we do need to prepare a Vedalken Orrery token creation trigger, and various setup things, so we do need to resolve the current stack a bit. And without Vedalken Orrery, we can't replay Spell Queller or Engineered Explosives, so I don't see any obvious way to destroy Skyshroud Archer more than once. So I think it's okay.
Looking at it again, we don't need to grant exactly indestructibility: Engineered Explosives doesn't push through regeneration, so Wrap in Vigor would save our tokens through Explosives but not through, say, Obliterate.
My thought is, if we can make sure there are no cheap targets to repeatedly hit with Unwind, we can make it so we can untap lands for each Volute when we cast Obliterate (because we can target it, fail to counter, and still untap the land), but not any other sorcery: any other sorcery will get countered, go to the graveyard, and we'll all be very sad. Then, we can have a land that taps to target some specific creature, which has a mass untap ability: for instance, a legendary targeter and Patron of the Orochi, or something like that. Then, those can build up new hyperstages of Skyshroud Archers, until Obliterate resolves and somehow generates a mana (or life, I suppose). I have no idea how that part goes.
For reference, here's a list of every card I could find that I think we'd be able to work with:
Some of these are more viable than others, there's a lot of overlap, and some probably already go infinite some way or another (we can target Worldgorger Dragon with Skyshroud Archer), but it's at least a start.
There are also some cards which might or might not work, I'm unsure. These are mostly mass bounce spells, with one exception:
Finally, as I've been catching up on this challenge, I've found that it gets hard to keep track of what people are talking about in the old decks, so for any future readers going through this, the deck we're building on is still:
Both implement a hyperstage, but the first one uses green mana as a resource, which is a problem because any super big stages we build on top of it will have to empty the mana pool, which is really hard to do. The new hyperstage takes more cards, but uses hasty tokens of Skyshroud Archer as the resource instead of green mana, which is good because there are way more ways to wipe out all tokens than wipe out all mana.
I don't see how Wrap in Vigor could regenerate the tokens without regenerating the nontoken Skyshroud Archer, which we don't want. Also, regenerating would tap the tokens, which would mess up the hyperstage.
Why can't Unwind counter some copy of an instant or sorcery?
The way Obliterate can generate life or mana is by destroying lands and bringing them back, via Titania, Protector of Argoth or something similar. It's a little tricky making it work with the gigastage if that also uses lands.
I have an interesting idea: We aren't using red spells at the hyperstage or below, so we could use some red spell to trigger Goblin Battle Jester, which could be used to target some creature that can untap creatures or give them haste, like Village Bell-Ringer. One possibility is Worldgorger Dragon, but that could be a little tricky in terms of generating mana, since if we have red mana lands we can send them from battlefield to exile and back again many times with Worldgorger Dragon and all its Dual Nature copies.
So, I'm thinking about using Recoup, and having that give a destruction sorcery flashback. Since Recoup is already red and costs a red, we might as well make the sorcery cheap, so perhaps Dimensional Breach? Then we get the red mana back using a Mountain, returned using Titania, Protector of Argoth.
Next, we have the gigastage, switched over to red, which requires some finagling. Natural Affinity will animate the Mountain, which can then be targeted many times with Peak Eruption, and imprinted on Mimic Vat to obtain a Mountain token. After each imprinting we can retrieve it with Natural Connection (it hurts to have to use both Titania and Natural Connection, but Natural Connection won't work in the megastage because it brings it back tapped, and I don't think Titania can be timed right to bring the Mountain back repeatedly for targeting.) and then animate it again with Natural Affinity.
Haven't thought about how to finish off the deck; creatures have been mooted, unfortunately, but we still have 2 colors for some potential stages. (Perhaps we can save black some way, with some replacement for Fumarole.) Not saving creatures for the end is obviously not ideal, but certainly any way to figure out how to make a gigastage will be major progress.
Please proceed to tear this deck apart! And please continue with your ideas Stakfish, perhaps there is some way to save creatures as well.
Edit: Meh, Recoup can also give Peak Eruption flashback and gain red mana. That's perhaps the big conundrum left: how do we get access to sorcery for the megastage without accessing any of the gigastage sorceries? Perhaps we do need to go with Worldgorger Dragon or something similar.
Wrap in Vigor can avoid regenerating the nontoken the same way Make a Stand can avoid giving it indestructible: we just have to cast it while the nontoken is off the board the first time, and after that the deck can proceed largely as normal. The tapping, however, is gg for that plan: I'd forgotten regeneration did that. And it's a real shame, because I'd found some Child of Alara shenanigans that would have worked with fewer cards and less closed off space.
Hey, I was wondering if it would be possible to use the Spell Queller / Skyshroud Archer setup for the hyperstage, without using Spellweaver Volute? Then the Volute could conceivably be used in the megastage, and the Helix in the gigastage. We would have to switch out Proclamation of Rebirth with an instant, and the higher instants/sorceries would have to be expensive, but it might be possible.
I don't see how to produce copies of all three instants with one Skyshroud Archer though; bouncing Spell Queller puts the instant and its copies on the stack immediately, and we would have to resolve those to get to the next Psychic Battle trigger for Skyshroud Archer. Maybe have 3 Skyshroud Archers? But, I'm wondering if we can gain Archer tokens by bypassing making copies of Battle Cry, which would be no good.
To be honest, I'm surprised by how close that token based hyperstage is to working. But I'm afraid it is not quite there yet, although the infinite I found is pretty convoluted.
First use one Skyshroud Archer token to bounce Spell Queller, generate lots of Metallurgeons and do alot of setup stuff, but skip the Rebuild. When we replay the Spell Queller we exile Proclamation of Rebirth as usual, but also make sure that a token copy exiles Vedalken Orrery. (While having tokens on the battlefield to keep playing at instant speed.)
Then tap a second Archer to generate a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Use the one to bounce the Spell Queller and cast Proclamation of Rebirth and do the stuff we'd do for a normal transition (including playing the Spell Queller to exile Proclamation again and resolving rebuild). Resolve the next PB trigger to bounce the token Spell Queller and cast Vedalken Orrery. We now can play at instant speed again and generate one Archer token. Next we use a third PB trigger bounce the Spell Queller another time and go through the transition again. another resolved Rebuild allows us to generate the second archer token.
We are back where we started with regards to archer tokens and skipping the Rebuild after the first archer activation ensures we don't run out of Metallurgeon based resources below it. Extra Metallurgeons generate extra mana and enchantments, going infinite.
Regarding the Mega and Ultra stage, I have no idea how we would differentiate between sorceries used by them. I think we would need one of them to be almost completely creature based. Those still seem quite a bit out of reach.
Also, keep in mind that untapping Mimic Vat is super dangerous. Creating a hasty, animated, untapped Mimic Vat is not all that difficult and imprinting a Village Bell-Ringer on that goes infinite as long as untapping creatures generates a bit of mana. Which it easily does for us, so yeah...
Oh, that is an excellent idea! I don't think we even have to use up multiple archers: we can just use Panharmonicon. Then Spell Queller can exile more than one spell at a time, both Battle Cry and Rebuild, and I think they go on the stack simultaneously. We get lots Swarm Intelligence triggers for both, and can resolve all the Battle Cries and only one Rebuild (making sure to Queller both the non-copy spells off the stack), and I think that's a clean hyperstage. We just need a way to get back the Archer from the graveyard... I think that just a second Archer would do the trick, no third required: that way, we can put the second under Spell Queller, so whenever we remove Spell Queller, underneath it we can put a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers for the Archer, guaranteeing that we get one back before we Explosives. With no other way to buy them back, that should work really well.
From there, we can have Spellweaver Volute trigger off a bounce-all spell, which has to resolve to generate a Mana, and feeds into Thoughtweft Gambit. That seems comparatively easy. Something with spirit guides?
Also, one problem: Spell Queller can exile and recast Gerrard's Verdict at a lower level, though not Worldpurge. If that goes infinite, we'll have to switch to the gainland configuration.
Edit: I say this knowing that I've said it multiple times before and I've been wrong every time, but... Is that really an infinite?
The problem I see is that you need more than just an Orrery to go off, you also need a hasted Metallurgeon token to restart, because Battle Cry only untap what's already there. Once you resolve a rebuild, you have to resolve a Metallurgeon psychic Battle trigger to put it on Mimic Vat, and even if you can exile Orrery under it, you still can't get a hasty Metallurgeon to activate between Rebuild resolving and the next Psychic Battle trigger on the Archer: you have to let the stack resolve down to the next Metallurgeon activation down. We can't even use the new Archer to generate more, because archers can't target Metallurgeon.
Re-edit: ah, I think I see what I was missing. If you're letting it resolve down and building too many archers, you don't need to worry about making more Metallurgeons. There's something about that line that seems weird to me though. In the meantime, back to square one I suppose.
Re-re-edit: if we skip Volute in the hyperstage and save it for the megastage, we can't choose to skip Rebuild anymore: once we use it once, we have to exile it on a Queller, token or nontoken, every time we use it. We can leave it on a token copy instead of the nontoken, but at some point we'll need to exile the spells under new Spell Quellers, which means bouncing the nontoken. That will trigger Dual Nature, so the stack will look like:
Leaves the battlefield trigger on the nontoken spell Queller
Dual Nature trigger exiling all our token spell Quellers
Battle triggers, etc.
We can control the order of the top two triggers, but either way, we'll be screwed: if the first trigger to resolve is Dual Nature, then Rebuild will go on the stack, and either resolve or get countered. If we cast Queller from hand to exile it, none of the token copies will be able to exile our other spells. If the first trigger is Queller casting, those spells will go on the stack above our dual nature trigger. We'll need to cast Queller to exile them, and none of the tokens will be able to stop the Rebuild coming down the line. We can't save the spells or an Orrery in between the two without using an entire Archer token, which brings us back to finite territory.
The only way to avoid that is to put Rebuild on the same Queller as the other spells, which makes it so that you can make that play for the first stage on the stack, but not for any above it.
I'm not sure whether we can can build more archers than the correct allotment, but in Iijil's scenario, the first bouncing of Spell Queller creates a lot more untapped hasted Metallurgeons by casting Battle Cry, and since we aren't casting Rebuild, all of those extra Metallurgeons go towards the current stage. So we have plenty of Metallurgeons to pay for any setup, and then some.
Does removing the Volute save us? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. We can cast Spell Queller with both Battle Cry and Rebuild on the stack, and have the nontoken Queller exile Rebuild, Vedalken Orrery, and the second Skyshroud Archer. The token can exile Battle Cry. We can tap a Skyshroud Archer to destroy the token, allowing Battle Cry to be cast. We get a bunch of untapped hasted Metallurgeons. We next play Engineered Explosives with one charge, and sacrifice it to destroy the first nontoken Skyshroud Archer. (Assume Make a Stand was cast at the right time.) Imprint the Archer and create another token copy. Use all the newly untapped Metallurgeon tokens to build up our stage by a lot. Tap a second Archer token, bouncing the original Spell Queller to our hand, which casts Rebuild, Vedalken Orrery, and the second Archer. The Rebuild can bring the Explosives back to our hand, and the Archer Bloodbond March triggers brings the first Archer back to the battlefield. Next, we can replay Spell Queller to exile Battle Cry, Rebuild, and maybe the second Archer again. We can resolve another Psychic Battle trigger from our second tapped Archer token, and bounce the nontoken Spell Queller to do the usual, and create another Archer token. So I think this is an infinite. I didn't bother to reset the Orrery, but the point is we have a lot more Metallurgeons now in the current stage, which should make any setup no problem.
Sigh. How can we fix this? Otherwise, the gigastage was looking to be shaping up nicely.
Hmmmm. You can do that the first time okay, but for it to go infinite you need to be able to repeatedly go through that line: otherwise, it will just add a layer on the bottom of the hyperstage. And I don't think you actually can.
That line starts by playing Engineered Explosives from hand, which is fine, because we can have it in our opener or some such. But once we play it from hand once, the only way to get it back to our hand to replay it is with Rebuild or (god forbid) Worldpurge, both of which delete all our progress. You're net-neutral on Skyshroud Archers there, so for you to get back to the same game state that you started that combo with, you would have to resolve a Rebuild copy after creating the third Skyshroud Archer token, which would also bounce all Vedalken Orrerys, Metallurgeons, and so on.
Put another way: You can only get at most a profit of 1 Skyshroud Archer token with that line: you start with one, use it to make the lower batch of triggers, and use Engineered Explosives in hand to make a second. You use up the second in the upper batch. The first trigger in the upper batch can make a third (for 1 untapped Archer total). To do so, though, you have to let Vedalken Orrery resolve, so the next Engineered Explosives bounce will bounce the Orrery, and you won't be able to do anything until the whole upper batch of Psychic Battle triggers resolves, and we get to the highest point on the stack where we can put a Dual Nature Orrery trigger. That one lets us generate a second Skyshroud Archer token, so where we had one, we now have two. However, Engineered Explosives is now in our graveyard, and we can only reuse it by playing Rebuild, so the above line isn't an option anymore. From there, I'm not sure it's possible to still go infinite.
However, if I'm wrong (and I totally might be), there are a few things necessary to all these infinite breaks:
1. Dual Nature needs to be there to let us split up the casting of Spell Queller cards. If we can replace this scaling mechanism at the initial layer, that knocks it out.
2. Spell Queller must be able to return Skyshroud Archer to the battlefield on its own. If we can require a Metallurgeon activation to rebuy Skyshroud Archer, then we are back to safety: we will only ever be able to create one Skyshroud Archer token per Psychic Battle batch, and all of these will be moot.
In the above line, I use Engineered Explosives twice, and cast Rebuild twice, so the Explosives wind up in our hand. I didn't mention putting a Vedalken Orrery on the stack to prepare for the second Rebuild, but that just costs a Metallurgeon tap or two, and we have gained plenty of those. So unfortunately, I still think it is an infinite.
Iijil, what say you?
We've been using Dual Nature for so long, I hardly remember the alternatives. At first we used Splinter Twin, but that was found to run into problems, because we can put a Splinter Twin activation on the stack before n-stage transitions (I forget why this broke things). I made some attempts to replace it with Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, but that proved to be quite troublesome, particularly because Populate does not create the initial token copy.
I'm not sure that requiring a Metallurgeon activation to get Skyshroud Archer will be enough to stop the infinite, since getting an unhindered Battle Cry can generate lots of new untapped Metallurgeons.
Well, you actually can't put a Metallurgeon activation before the second Rebuild: all Rebuilds and Psychic Battle triggers go on the stack in simultaneous batches, so you'd have to let the entire stack resolve back down to below the upper batch to get another Orrery.
I know that in the old Splinter Twin decks, you guys were moving it around. Do you or lijil know whether it still breaks if we don't let it move around? That way, it can only be left on a Bloodbond March or Psychic Battle, neither of which can serve as stage or n-stage resources. We'd also have to cut Copy Enchantment and Allay though, and replace them with something...
Hmm... If we don't let Splinter Twin move around, copy it, or bounce it cheaply, then it will be stuck on the original Psychic Battle or Bloodbond March, which will be tapped after usage. So we will need to untap it. Untapping everything is no good, and I don't know of anything that untaps enchantments (since those don't usually get tapped). Perhaps Patron of the Orochi? Now that's REALLY old tech. Replacing Skyshroud Archer should be easy enough. But then we need to find a way to give the Patron haste, and bounce it. Bouncing it shouldn't be too hard, we can have something that targets green, or Legendary, or Spirits. But giving it haste seems difficult.
Edit: Perhaps we can just use Mimic Vat tokens to get haste. We could also add Maze Rusher, so that Splinter Twin could be used on Bloodbond March, but not much else without resorting to Mimic Vat tokens.
Looking back at old posts, it looks like Splinter Twin went infinite by tapping a Metallurgeon to put an activation of Splinter Twin on the stack before the hyperstage transition. Then we start the transition, Battle Cry untaps a lot of Metallurgeons, so that we can create a lot of spare mana, then the upper stage resolves, and we get a Metallurgeon token back. We can use Splinter Twin a bunch of times to create a lot of tapped Metallurgeon tokens, then activate the last Metallurgeon and start the transition again.
I haven't thought about doing this with the new hyperstage; also we have Su-Chi and Vedalken Orrery instead of Tooth of Ramos and Leyline of Anticipation, which may make the infinite harder. At first glance though I would think you can do the same thing.
Edit: Well, we can use Hoof Skulkin to bounce and destroy Patron of the Orochi at the cost of generic mana. So then we need to replace Skyshroud Archer. But, there are surprisingly no creatures that can tap to target creatures with flying other than green or artifact creatures. And there are no creatures that can tap to target Spirits other than white or artifact creatures. What about blue? We can use Spinal Villain or Norritt to target Spell Queller, and then have three or four mana colors available for Engineered Explosives. Spinal Villain would be better, but I'm not sure if being able to destroy Spell Quellers at the same time will allow an infinite. We could also sacrifice the Explosives for 2CMC to destroy the nontoken Metallurgeon, but that would give up the Spinal Villain, so it seems like we should lose out on that exchange.
If we use a creature with a converted Mana cost of exactly 4 Norritt, for instance), when we kill it with Explosives we will also kill Vedalken Orrery. We have no way of getting the nontoken out of the graveyard and no way to make more tokens without access to it, so we will fizzle with any of the above lines of play.
With that said, we would also be able to then use Engineered Explosives to kill the Spell Queller, though I don't think that's a problem: killing Spell Queller just fizzles us, because then we don't have a way to stop the spells resolving.
Does that work? It certainly eliminates both the earlier infinites, which rely on being able to use the nontoken Orrery in the middle of a stack of hyperstage token triggers, but there are probably other things we've missed.
Edit: nothing we have so far interacts with Winding Constrictor, so if we can make sure to have 3 Constrictors out when this runs, and be able to rebuild them when they inevitably get offed in the mega or gigastage, we can get 4 charge counters on Engineered Explosives without wasting 4 different colors of Mana. Nothing we have so far uses counters as a resource.
Ooh, very nice! We would need to keep our Vedalken Orrery in our hand or on the stack when Engineered Explosives is being used, so we can't do the scenario I was outlining. (Does that also mean that Leyline of Anticipation is safe as well? Just curious.)
But, the Explosives will then also destroy Opalescence, Bloodbond March, March of the Machines, Horobi, Death's Wail and Su-Chi. We can bounce all of those except Horobi which is something of a pain. We can't bounce Horobi as a Spirit or a flying creature without also being able to bounce Spell Queller too cheaply. And we can't bounce Horobi as a black creature without also being able to bounce Norritt. Hm...
I think there might be an answer for Horobi in an idea I explored but couldn't get working a while back: death triggers. If we can connect a chain of triggers that start with a 4cmc creature dying and ends with targeting a "target creature with flying" dude (let's say still Skyshroud Archer), not only would we be able to bounce Horobi, we would also no longer need to grant anything indestructible, potentially freeing up a card like Child of Alara or Obliterate for the megastage, which might make our lives a lot easier down the line. Back when I thought we couldn't let Engineered Explosives get high enough to kill Metallurgeon, I tried to find a death trigger among magic's 1-drops that would work, but struck out. At 4cmc though....
The best option I can see is Driver of the Dead, which can bring back a 2-drop creature, and also rebuy Skyshroud Archer, so we won't need two copies of both. From there, we need a 1- or 2-drop creature that can target an elf, an archer, or a green creature, that cannot be targeted by anything we have so far (so no flyers, artifact creatures, etc.). We also need a cheap way to kill it without targeting.
Two other notes:
1. Takeno's Cavalry, famously one of the worst cards ever printed, is /so close/ to being exactly what we need here, as a 4-drop that taps to target spirits. If only it didn't specify attacking or blocking...
2. I'm a bit unclear on what differentiates a hyperstage and a megastage from two consecutive hyperstages. In the current deck, why do we have a megastage, and not a second hyperstage? And if we only had two hyperstages, what would be different about the resource flows?
EDIT: Hang on. Horobi would be indestructible here! The only reason Vedalken Orrery isn't is because we had to play it just after a Rebuild, in that hypothetical line. It won't die to explosives.
That begs the question, "can we give Orrery indestructible between the Rebuild resolving and playing Explosives?" I believe the answer is no. In order to give it indestructible, we'd need to cast a Make a Stand copy after the Orrery resolves, but the spell copies from Swarm Intelligence have to go on the stack ABOVE any cards we cast from bouncing Spell Queller. We could activate another Skyshroud Archer, Norritt, whatever, to bounce Spell Queller again and grant indestructible, but then you're wasting an entire Skyshroud Archer token on it, when we only got one extra token out of that line in the first place.
Very good point! I see what you are saying about us not being able to give Vedalken Orrery indestructible, we won't be able to with our current line, but... it looks very perilous. We would really need to check this possibility out very carefully.
I was actually kinda fuzzy on the difference between two hyperstages and a megastage as well. To see the difference between two hyperstages and a megastage, you can take a look at our older posts where we had two hyperstages, where the second hyperstage had a creature stage, followed by Mobilize and Obliterate at the hyperstage level. Here, we have the Spellweaver Helix hyperstage on the bottom, nothing from the first hyperstage is in that portion of the stack, and the Spellweaver Volute hyperstage just goes directly above it. For the megastage, though, for each time we spend a megastage resource and do the megastage transition, we place a hyperstage. So in the current deck, we spend 3 life to flashback Acorn Harvest, and we trigger Deconstruct, which gives us the mana we need to create a new hyperstage; and we also trigger Worldpurge, which allows us to get our life back, but eliminates all our green mana. A key difference between the two is that in the two hyperstage version, we can't use a cheap resource from the first hyperstage to restart the second; in the old two hyperstage decks, we would have to get back a creature from the second hyperstage to restart the upper stage. In the megastage decks, we can use a Metallurgeon trigger or triggers to restart the upper hyperstage. But this would go infinite unless we made another change, which is that the destructive ability for the megastage has to get rid of all the hyperstage resources. So that made things more difficult, but we were able to work it out.
So what is different about the resource flows is that, with two hyperstages, we can basically operate them independently, so long as after resolving the second hyperstage we get a lot of resources for the first hyperstage. In the megastage everything weaves back and forth, so we have to be more careful; in particular we have to get rid of the hyperstage resources in the megastage transition.
Yeah, I for one will be much more comfortable if we can find an intervening set of triggers so we don't have to play with Indestructible.
In the meantime, one thought I had for the megastage was Snapcaster Mage to give a sorcery like Devastation Tide flashback, letting us turn blue mana into a wave of Spellweaver Volute triggers. As far as I can see, we have two ways to proceed from there:
1. We can directly have it copy Thoughtweft Gambit, untapping all our Norritts. After that, all we need is a way to produce a constant amount of blue mana from Devastation Tide resolving, and we're most of the way to a gigastage. The problem here is that Thoughtweft Gambit can untap Mimic Vat. I don't think that's a problem at this level, since that mimic vat will disappear come Devastation Tide and Worldpurge time, but if it's possible to get multiple uses out of a Mimic Vat in one of the stages we feed into the mega, then we'll be in some real trouble.
2. We can have it copy a cmc 5+ spell which can target Patron of the Orochi. From there, each instant resolving gives us X Psychic Battle triggers, each of which can bounce and replay Patron, getting X Bloodbond March triggers. When we play Patron, we can counter it, use a trigger to bring it back, then legend rule it to the graveyard with a Dual Nature trigger. From there, we can put Patron on Mimic Vat, make a hasty token, and then repeat with the next Bloodbond March trigger. We can connect green creatures to the hyperstage by either using Skyshroud Archer, Daybreak Ranger, etc., alongside a death trigger, or by using Norritt alongside Krosan Constrictor.
So, the question really is, which is likely to be more restrictive, later on down the line? A search of instants that target with a cmc 5+ suggests that the narrowest we'd be able to get is probably "target nonblack creature", which closes off an awful lot of space. I think the better way is probably Thoughtweft Gambit, and use some color-based stages afterward, then maybe opponent-damage layers?
I suppose the Patron of the Orochi would close off less space, since it still leaves black creatures open, and doesn't close off more colors as far as I can see. Number of card slots will be another factor, so we should keep both in mind if and when we complete the gigastage.
The more pressing question is, how are we going to get those two blue mana back? A serious problem is that if we include Snapcaster Mage, then we can cast Worldpurge for just white mana. So it doesn't look like this idea can work with Worldpurge. We could switch to Worldfire, but that eliminates life, so we would have to base the megastage off of life. Just using lands that pay life or deal damage to get blue mana won't work, since then we can convert life to blue mana and keep it through the gigastage transition.
Another idea is to use a card that already has flashback, but I don't think there is such a card that will bounce/exile all creatures and artifacts, nor did I find an instant that will bounce/exile all creatures and artifacts. So I don't know how to make this idea work either.
Perhaps your Child of Alara shenanigans is worth exploring now?
Okay, so Child of Alara shenanigans: Let's assume for the moment we find a death trigger sequence that doesn't break by targeting Child of Alara. We need to start out by making blue mana plentiful: Princess Lucrezia can do it. From there, we have a card that targets blue creatures for red mana: Slingshot Goblin. All of these tap, but it doesn't matter because we can turn one blue mana into a Riptide Chronologist activation, untapping our choice of Norritts, Lucrezias, or Slingshot Goblin.
Nothing, besides Slingshot Goblin, can target Child of Alara. So we spend one red mana to put X Psychic Battle triggers on the stack. The top ones can all bounce Chronologist, but the bottom one bounces Child of Alara, destroying all nonland permanents. I'm not sure how to turn that into a red mana, but Simian Spirit Guide is probably involved?
It's honestly not much, but it's something to work towards at least. The other option, like you said, is to go for a Worldfire gigastage and a life mega. That honestly seems easier to me, though I'm not sure if that's because it's easier or because I don't know enough to know how difficult it would be.
Edit: for anyone who comes across this later, and so that we have a reference point without having to go to the previous page, the current deck:
It looks good to me, although of course we should await Iijil's assessment.
Is there a reason why you don't add three more Baffling Ends to increase the final damage? I'm not sure how tight the deck is in terms of card slots - there are some cards that you can give up, like the Annointed Processions and the Yargle, but I don't know what changes are needed to correct for Ajani Unyielding and Muldrotha, the Gravetide.
Concerning the Vintage combo: Yes, the solution seems to be using triggered abilities to connect abilities together. What we have used so far is to have the same action (casting a sorcery) trigger both the beneficial and destructive abilities for the n-stage. I believe what we could also do is have one ability trigger the other. For example, we could activate/cast the destructive ability, and have the activation/casting trigger the beneficial ability; note that it would have to be triggered on activation rather than resolution, so that the beneficial ability goes on top. Or, we could activate/cast the beneficial ability, and have the resolution of the beneficial ability trigger the destructive ability. I think that could also work.
So, perhaps something like activating Village Bell-Ringer, and have the untapping cause something that will allow a destructive spell to be cast, maybe with an Inspired ability? It doesn't look like we can just use the ability of an untapped creature to cast the destructive spell, like Nevinyrral's Disk or perhaps Dralnu, Lich Lord; unfortunately, if it isn't triggered, we can use our untapped creatures to build up the lower hyperstage, then cast the spell to transition to the higher hyperstage, which is no good. So we need Bushwhacker's ability or Village Bell-Ringer's ability to trigger something. But what?
Edit: @Iijil, could you describe your energy to life layer? Even if it messes up the use of Silent Gravestone, it could lead to greater damage some other way.
At a quick glance, it doesn't look like we need red mana for the main combo, outside of Humans. Onward // Victory need only be cast once, and Bloodwater Entity we only need to redraw our instants/sorceries. So perhaps we could get rid of Spire of Industry and Aether Hub, and add Shefet Dunes. Then we could perhaps have:
pay N energy to gain X life: X to 3 -> 3 -> X
cast an instant/sorcery to gain X energy: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 2
pay 1 red mana to kick Ghitu Chronicler: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 3
attack with Grand Warlord Radha: X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 4
(just an idea)
A minor problem I also noted: Legion Lieutenant would need to be cut as well, otherwise we can kill off one round of unbuffed Paladin of Atonements, bring them back, buff them and kill them off again. The Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle dies one Radiating Lightning earlier than the Paladins, but that doesn't matter and we have a net gain of 2 life.
Edit: I guess we could sacrifice Slinn Voda, which would be no good.
Edit: I just realized we need flash for all our permanents, and only historic spells get those. That's really restrictive.
Edit: Just throwing out ideas: We can perhaps use Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle for our trigger A. We could use Teshar to retrieve two to four Fan Bearers, which can tap Slinn Voda. Then we can use play Naru Meha to copy Take Vengeance and destroy the Slinn Voda. If we have the ability to discard, (say with Chromium, the Mutable) then we can use a Slinn Voda trigger to bring everything back to our hand, discard the Fan Bearers, and then cast Teshar to get the Fan Bearers again. So only the Slinn Voda triggers would get us layers, but that's fine. The problem is how to get our mana/life back; if we just add an Paladin of Atonement it appears that things go infinite.
With that said, I don't think you can as easily gain life that way with Teshar: Radiating Lightning also damages Teshar itself, so it would die pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure you can only profit a total of 2 life off a single Teshar cast, after which you will need to unlock the state again. 1 of that life has to pay for Teshar, leaving only 1 more life to work with. It's the same trick as with Raging Swordtooth.
The Ajani life layer, assuming it works like the one I tried to get working and failed, works by: play Ajani, pump a creature a ton with Onward, and minus Ajani to gain that much life. Once you resolve Ajani to activate him, the only way to reset him is to kill him, and the only way to do that is by spending 5 energy on a Dynavolt Tower activation. The problem is that we have no EDH Teferi in standard, so loyalty abilities are sorcery speed: even if you could build a draw layer on top of it, you'd have to resolve and redraw your Instants between each activation.
I evaluated the possibility of an energy->life layer, by using Shefet Dunes to turn life into white Mana, and tie red Mana to energy. I used Firesong and Sunspeaker to give red spells lifelink, where the only spell it touched was {c]Magma Spray[/c], which is safe to copy with Naru Meha cause you can't kill Slinn Voda with it: it'll exile the creature and fizzle the combo. You can do this as long as F&S are on the battlefield, but Slinn Voda bounces them and you'll have to pay another red to replay them. The problem is that it goes infinite with Radiating Lightning. If only Heaven//Earth didn't have that aftermath effect....
Also, re spare slots: generally speaking, standard doesn't have enough cards for every card in the deck to serve a purpose: usually, you run out of layers to add before you run out of cards. As a result, I usually feel pretty comfortable adding extra cards to make the setup more convenient and the math simpler to understand, because even if we can get more value with 3 more Baffling Ends, it won't change our total approximation (remember: we can only play Baffling End and activate Ajani at sorcery speed, so each one would only at most double our opponents life total from the last one, not enough to add more runs to that layer). The converse is that you basically don't have to worry about fitting all the cards in: there's always a spare Anointed Procession or setup card you can cut, if you have to.
I think the difference with Raging Swordtooth is that Raging Swordtooth required a life to cast, while Naru Meha does not.
Edit: What's the problem with Heaven // Earth's aftermath effect? I would think you could just keep it on the stack and copy it with Naru Meha. We couldn't use the combat phases, it would be worth it to get an extra layer.
Edit: Some thoughts on how to connect triggers in the Vintage combo: We can create a face down card, then turn it over, triggering two abilities. (Maybe one from that card and one from another card that triggers on any permanent turning face up)
Or, use a Spirit or Arcane spell to trigger one of those abilities. Problem: Arcane spells will have been mooted by the Spellweaver stages, except for X spells, of which there are few.
The problem with Heaven//Earth is that you can play the aftermath, copy it with Naru Meha, and use the aftermath to kill Slinn Voda without giving it flying. You don't even need to pay life. If we could force another sorcery to be on the stack, though, so you couldn't go off at all without closing off the ability to play the aftermath....
On the vintage combo, I've actually found what I think is a much safer way to turn a creature tap into a sorcery, one that even allows for Engineered Explosives over discarding lands: Spell Queller.
The principle is that we have a sorcery with cmc<5 (I'm using Proclamation of Rebirth for other reasons), Spell Queller, and a creature that can target it. I'm using Skyshroud Archer. We cast our sorcery once to get a layer above our stage like usual, but instead of letting Proclamation resolve, we play Spell Queller and exile it. Then, we can tap an Archer to bounce Spell Queller at any time, letting us immediately cast Proclamation for free. Critically, we can't wait on this: casting it is part of resolving Queller's trigger, so we can't put anything underneath between activations.
We go through the stage this way, but once we start to run low on Archer activations on the stack, bounce March of the Machines and use Salvaging Station to get back Engineered Explosives. Rebuild then bounces the Explosives, and we pay {w} to play it for x=1. Note that token copies can only destroy 0-cmc cards and are therefore useless, and that since we only have white Mana at this stage, we can't play it for higher values of X to kill unsafe things like Metallurgeon.
We can then activate Explosives to kill the nontoken Archer (to prevent this from killing the tokens we have banked up, they'll need to get Indestructible: I don't think a global indestructible granting effect like Make a Stand would break anything, but I could easily be wrong), and put it on Mimic Vat. we make another hasty token, make an Orrery like in the old hyperstage, and as a last step replay Spell Queller to exile the Proclamation.
From there, Archer is stuck in the graveyard, and we have no way to target it to get Bloodbond March triggers earlier to buy it back. But the next time we bounce Spell Queller, we can get Swarm Intelligence copies of Proclamation, and use one of them to bring back the nontoken Archer.
This breaks a different part of the mega (giga?) Stage, because all the Sorceries that flashback by paying 3 life can be exiled with Spell Queller, but finding a new way to make 3 life part of the cost of casting a sorcery seems a lot easier than finding a new way to turn Worldpurge resolving into 3 life. I'm pretty sure saving a color of Mana for the gigastage and generating it with Tarnished Citadel does it. The other Advantage, compared to either Land's Edge or Seismic Assault, is that it closes off way less space later on: only fliers and creatures with cmc<=the number of colors of Mana which are plentiful at that layer.
I'm not sure how to then put the megastage together: one thought I had was Obliterate and Unwind, which can be cast with Volute but will only have a target that won't sink the combo if Obliterate is on the stack. The problem is that, as a destroy effect, anything that saves tokens from Explosives also saves them from Obliterate, so it won't actually delete all tokens. It's possible there's a better way to turn Explosives for 1 into an untapped hasty token (a death trigger?), but for now I think this is a much cleaner way to implement a token hyperstage.
The obvious way to get around indestructibility would be to exile everything. Apocalypse seems to severe, as it would get rid of our hand, and I'm not sure how we would get all our permanents back. Perhaps Dimensional Breach? So what can trigger this plus something else - I was thinking about Mischievous Quanar, which will copy a sorcery or instant when turned face up, but I'm not sure what beneficial ability to link this with. Secret Plans will draw a card, but we can't have something that we can delay. I was thinking about Aven Farseer, which would collect +1/+1 counters, and then we could cast something that would transfer the counters to Skyshroud Archers, and then we could enchant them with Sinking Feelings... but, Sinking Feeling is no good with Metallurgeon since it has more than 1 toughness, and so does any artifact creature alternative. (Coretapper is almost good, but it can sacrifice itself.) Bah, this line of thinking is really not working out.
Tarnished Citadel could work, but it can't be paired with lifelands, since if we can recycle the Tarnished citadel to provide the mana whenever we want to cast the sorcery, we can also recycle the lifelands to get the life back at the same time. So it would have to go with Gerrard's Verdict. Which could work, but then we couldn't have any other lands... which means we can't have lands provide mana at the megastage level. That's a shame. The Fumarole idea seems like a good one as well.
An alternative to consider is using Worldfire at the gigastage level rather than Worldpurge. Then, the megastage would be fueled by life, and the gigastage by mana, rather than the other way around.
Another thing to consider is maybe using our Spellweaver Helix up at the megastage, and then have the gigastage use... X spells? But, I don't know how we cut off life or mana other than with Worldfire or Worldpurge, so maybe this won't work.
Edit: On second thought, I don't think this token hyperstage works. We can tap a hasted Skyshroud Archer token to bounce Spell Queller, causing Proclamation of Rebirth to be cast, getting lots of Swarm Intelligence copies, and various Spellweaver Volute triggers, including for Rebuild. We can use Rebuild to bounce Engineered Explosives back to our hand and cast it with one charge counter. Sacrifice it to destroy the nontoken Skyshroud Archer, and imprint it on a Mimic Vat, creating a hasted token copy. Do various things to bring the Skyshroud Archer back to the graveyard, then resolve a Proclamation of Rebirth copy to bring it back to the battlefield. Use Salvaging Station to bring Engineered Explosives back to the battlefield as well, and replay Spell Queller to exile the original Proclamation of Rebirth. We are back to our starting point, and we didn't have to use anything currently on the stack, so we can do this forever.
Re-edit: Oops, we do need to prepare a Vedalken Orrery token creation trigger, and various setup things, so we do need to resolve the current stack a bit. And without Vedalken Orrery, we can't replay Spell Queller or Engineered Explosives, so I don't see any obvious way to destroy Skyshroud Archer more than once. So I think it's okay.
My thought is, if we can make sure there are no cheap targets to repeatedly hit with Unwind, we can make it so we can untap lands for each Volute when we cast Obliterate (because we can target it, fail to counter, and still untap the land), but not any other sorcery: any other sorcery will get countered, go to the graveyard, and we'll all be very sad. Then, we can have a land that taps to target some specific creature, which has a mass untap ability: for instance, a legendary targeter and Patron of the Orochi, or something like that. Then, those can build up new hyperstages of Skyshroud Archers, until Obliterate resolves and somehow generates a mana (or life, I suppose). I have no idea how that part goes.
For reference, here's a list of every card I could find that I think we'd be able to work with:
Some of these are more viable than others, there's a lot of overlap, and some probably already go infinite some way or another (we can target Worldgorger Dragon with Skyshroud Archer), but it's at least a start.
There are also some cards which might or might not work, I'm unsure. These are mostly mass bounce spells, with one exception:
Finally, as I've been catching up on this challenge, I've found that it gets hard to keep track of what people are talking about in the old decks, so for any future readers going through this, the deck we're building on is still:
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
We're talking about replacing
with
Both implement a hyperstage, but the first one uses green mana as a resource, which is a problem because any super big stages we build on top of it will have to empty the mana pool, which is really hard to do. The new hyperstage takes more cards, but uses hasty tokens of Skyshroud Archer as the resource instead of green mana, which is good because there are way more ways to wipe out all tokens than wipe out all mana.
Why can't Unwind counter some copy of an instant or sorcery?
The way Obliterate can generate life or mana is by destroying lands and bringing them back, via Titania, Protector of Argoth or something similar. It's a little tricky making it work with the gigastage if that also uses lands.
I have an interesting idea: We aren't using red spells at the hyperstage or below, so we could use some red spell to trigger Goblin Battle Jester, which could be used to target some creature that can untap creatures or give them haste, like Village Bell-Ringer. One possibility is Worldgorger Dragon, but that could be a little tricky in terms of generating mana, since if we have red mana lands we can send them from battlefield to exile and back again many times with Worldgorger Dragon and all its Dual Nature copies.
So, I'm thinking about using Recoup, and having that give a destruction sorcery flashback. Since Recoup is already red and costs a red, we might as well make the sorcery cheap, so perhaps Dimensional Breach? Then we get the red mana back using a Mountain, returned using Titania, Protector of Argoth.
Next, we have the gigastage, switched over to red, which requires some finagling. Natural Affinity will animate the Mountain, which can then be targeted many times with Peak Eruption, and imprinted on Mimic Vat to obtain a Mountain token. After each imprinting we can retrieve it with Natural Connection (it hurts to have to use both Titania and Natural Connection, but Natural Connection won't work in the megastage because it brings it back tapped, and I don't think Titania can be timed right to bring the Mountain back repeatedly for targeting.) and then animate it again with Natural Affinity.
So, a prospective deck:
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
17 Farrelite Priest
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Spellweaver Volute
22 Engineered Explosives
23 Salvaging Station
24 Proclamation of Rebirth
25 Swarm Intelligence
26 Spell Queller
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Make a Stand
29 Village Bell-Ringer
30 Goblin Battle Jester
31 Dimensional Breach
32 Recoup
33 Badlands
34 Titania, Protector of Argoth
35 Evacuation
37 Vile Redeemer
38 Peak Eruption
39 Natural Affinity
40 Natural Connection
41 Worldpurge
42 Fumarole
43 Fumarole
44 Spellweaver Helix
45 Panharmonicon
46 Gerrard's Verdict
Haven't thought about how to finish off the deck; creatures have been mooted, unfortunately, but we still have 2 colors for some potential stages. (Perhaps we can save black some way, with some replacement for Fumarole.) Not saving creatures for the end is obviously not ideal, but certainly any way to figure out how to make a gigastage will be major progress.
Please proceed to tear this deck apart! And please continue with your ideas Stakfish, perhaps there is some way to save creatures as well.
Edit: Meh, Recoup can also give Peak Eruption flashback and gain red mana. That's perhaps the big conundrum left: how do we get access to sorcery for the megastage without accessing any of the gigastage sorceries? Perhaps we do need to go with Worldgorger Dragon or something similar.
Wrap in Vigor can avoid regenerating the nontoken the same way Make a Stand can avoid giving it indestructible: we just have to cast it while the nontoken is off the board the first time, and after that the deck can proceed largely as normal. The tapping, however, is gg for that plan: I'd forgotten regeneration did that. And it's a real shame, because I'd found some Child of Alara shenanigans that would have worked with fewer cards and less closed off space.
I don't see how to produce copies of all three instants with one Skyshroud Archer though; bouncing Spell Queller puts the instant and its copies on the stack immediately, and we would have to resolve those to get to the next Psychic Battle trigger for Skyshroud Archer. Maybe have 3 Skyshroud Archers? But, I'm wondering if we can gain Archer tokens by bypassing making copies of Battle Cry, which would be no good.
First use one Skyshroud Archer token to bounce Spell Queller, generate lots of Metallurgeons and do alot of setup stuff, but skip the Rebuild. When we replay the Spell Queller we exile Proclamation of Rebirth as usual, but also make sure that a token copy exiles Vedalken Orrery. (While having tokens on the battlefield to keep playing at instant speed.)
Then tap a second Archer to generate a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Use the one to bounce the Spell Queller and cast Proclamation of Rebirth and do the stuff we'd do for a normal transition (including playing the Spell Queller to exile Proclamation again and resolving rebuild). Resolve the next PB trigger to bounce the token Spell Queller and cast Vedalken Orrery. We now can play at instant speed again and generate one Archer token. Next we use a third PB trigger bounce the Spell Queller another time and go through the transition again. another resolved Rebuild allows us to generate the second archer token.
We are back where we started with regards to archer tokens and skipping the Rebuild after the first archer activation ensures we don't run out of Metallurgeon based resources below it. Extra Metallurgeons generate extra mana and enchantments, going infinite.
Regarding the Mega and Ultra stage, I have no idea how we would differentiate between sorceries used by them. I think we would need one of them to be almost completely creature based. Those still seem quite a bit out of reach.
Also, keep in mind that untapping Mimic Vat is super dangerous. Creating a hasty, animated, untapped Mimic Vat is not all that difficult and imprinting a Village Bell-Ringer on that goes infinite as long as untapping creatures generates a bit of mana. Which it easily does for us, so yeah...
From there, we can have Spellweaver Volute trigger off a bounce-all spell, which has to resolve to generate a Mana, and feeds into Thoughtweft Gambit. That seems comparatively easy. Something with spirit guides?
Also, one problem: Spell Queller can exile and recast Gerrard's Verdict at a lower level, though not Worldpurge. If that goes infinite, we'll have to switch to the gainland configuration.
Edit: I say this knowing that I've said it multiple times before and I've been wrong every time, but... Is that really an infinite?
The problem I see is that you need more than just an Orrery to go off, you also need a hasted Metallurgeon token to restart, because Battle Cry only untap what's already there. Once you resolve a rebuild, you have to resolve a Metallurgeon psychic Battle trigger to put it on Mimic Vat, and even if you can exile Orrery under it, you still can't get a hasty Metallurgeon to activate between Rebuild resolving and the next Psychic Battle trigger on the Archer: you have to let the stack resolve down to the next Metallurgeon activation down. We can't even use the new Archer to generate more, because archers can't target Metallurgeon.
Re-edit: ah, I think I see what I was missing. If you're letting it resolve down and building too many archers, you don't need to worry about making more Metallurgeons. There's something about that line that seems weird to me though. In the meantime, back to square one I suppose.
Re-re-edit: if we skip Volute in the hyperstage and save it for the megastage, we can't choose to skip Rebuild anymore: once we use it once, we have to exile it on a Queller, token or nontoken, every time we use it. We can leave it on a token copy instead of the nontoken, but at some point we'll need to exile the spells under new Spell Quellers, which means bouncing the nontoken. That will trigger Dual Nature, so the stack will look like:
Leaves the battlefield trigger on the nontoken spell Queller
Dual Nature trigger exiling all our token spell Quellers
Battle triggers, etc.
We can control the order of the top two triggers, but either way, we'll be screwed: if the first trigger to resolve is Dual Nature, then Rebuild will go on the stack, and either resolve or get countered. If we cast Queller from hand to exile it, none of the token copies will be able to exile our other spells. If the first trigger is Queller casting, those spells will go on the stack above our dual nature trigger. We'll need to cast Queller to exile them, and none of the tokens will be able to stop the Rebuild coming down the line. We can't save the spells or an Orrery in between the two without using an entire Archer token, which brings us back to finite territory.
The only way to avoid that is to put Rebuild on the same Queller as the other spells, which makes it so that you can make that play for the first stage on the stack, but not for any above it.
Does removing the Volute save us? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. We can cast Spell Queller with both Battle Cry and Rebuild on the stack, and have the nontoken Queller exile Rebuild, Vedalken Orrery, and the second Skyshroud Archer. The token can exile Battle Cry. We can tap a Skyshroud Archer to destroy the token, allowing Battle Cry to be cast. We get a bunch of untapped hasted Metallurgeons. We next play Engineered Explosives with one charge, and sacrifice it to destroy the first nontoken Skyshroud Archer. (Assume Make a Stand was cast at the right time.) Imprint the Archer and create another token copy. Use all the newly untapped Metallurgeon tokens to build up our stage by a lot. Tap a second Archer token, bouncing the original Spell Queller to our hand, which casts Rebuild, Vedalken Orrery, and the second Archer. The Rebuild can bring the Explosives back to our hand, and the Archer Bloodbond March triggers brings the first Archer back to the battlefield. Next, we can replay Spell Queller to exile Battle Cry, Rebuild, and maybe the second Archer again. We can resolve another Psychic Battle trigger from our second tapped Archer token, and bounce the nontoken Spell Queller to do the usual, and create another Archer token. So I think this is an infinite. I didn't bother to reset the Orrery, but the point is we have a lot more Metallurgeons now in the current stage, which should make any setup no problem.
Sigh. How can we fix this? Otherwise, the gigastage was looking to be shaping up nicely.
That line starts by playing Engineered Explosives from hand, which is fine, because we can have it in our opener or some such. But once we play it from hand once, the only way to get it back to our hand to replay it is with Rebuild or (god forbid) Worldpurge, both of which delete all our progress. You're net-neutral on Skyshroud Archers there, so for you to get back to the same game state that you started that combo with, you would have to resolve a Rebuild copy after creating the third Skyshroud Archer token, which would also bounce all Vedalken Orrerys, Metallurgeons, and so on.
Put another way: You can only get at most a profit of 1 Skyshroud Archer token with that line: you start with one, use it to make the lower batch of triggers, and use Engineered Explosives in hand to make a second. You use up the second in the upper batch. The first trigger in the upper batch can make a third (for 1 untapped Archer total). To do so, though, you have to let Vedalken Orrery resolve, so the next Engineered Explosives bounce will bounce the Orrery, and you won't be able to do anything until the whole upper batch of Psychic Battle triggers resolves, and we get to the highest point on the stack where we can put a Dual Nature Orrery trigger. That one lets us generate a second Skyshroud Archer token, so where we had one, we now have two. However, Engineered Explosives is now in our graveyard, and we can only reuse it by playing Rebuild, so the above line isn't an option anymore. From there, I'm not sure it's possible to still go infinite.
However, if I'm wrong (and I totally might be), there are a few things necessary to all these infinite breaks:
1. Dual Nature needs to be there to let us split up the casting of Spell Queller cards. If we can replace this scaling mechanism at the initial layer, that knocks it out.
2. Spell Queller must be able to return Skyshroud Archer to the battlefield on its own. If we can require a Metallurgeon activation to rebuy Skyshroud Archer, then we are back to safety: we will only ever be able to create one Skyshroud Archer token per Psychic Battle batch, and all of these will be moot.
Iijil, what say you?
We've been using Dual Nature for so long, I hardly remember the alternatives. At first we used Splinter Twin, but that was found to run into problems, because we can put a Splinter Twin activation on the stack before n-stage transitions (I forget why this broke things). I made some attempts to replace it with Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, but that proved to be quite troublesome, particularly because Populate does not create the initial token copy.
I'm not sure that requiring a Metallurgeon activation to get Skyshroud Archer will be enough to stop the infinite, since getting an unhindered Battle Cry can generate lots of new untapped Metallurgeons.
I know that in the old Splinter Twin decks, you guys were moving it around. Do you or lijil know whether it still breaks if we don't let it move around? That way, it can only be left on a Bloodbond March or Psychic Battle, neither of which can serve as stage or n-stage resources. We'd also have to cut Copy Enchantment and Allay though, and replace them with something...
Edit: Perhaps we can just use Mimic Vat tokens to get haste. We could also add Maze Rusher, so that Splinter Twin could be used on Bloodbond March, but not much else without resorting to Mimic Vat tokens.
Looking back at old posts, it looks like Splinter Twin went infinite by tapping a Metallurgeon to put an activation of Splinter Twin on the stack before the hyperstage transition. Then we start the transition, Battle Cry untaps a lot of Metallurgeons, so that we can create a lot of spare mana, then the upper stage resolves, and we get a Metallurgeon token back. We can use Splinter Twin a bunch of times to create a lot of tapped Metallurgeon tokens, then activate the last Metallurgeon and start the transition again.
I haven't thought about doing this with the new hyperstage; also we have Su-Chi and Vedalken Orrery instead of Tooth of Ramos and Leyline of Anticipation, which may make the infinite harder. At first glance though I would think you can do the same thing.
Edit: Well, we can use Hoof Skulkin to bounce and destroy Patron of the Orochi at the cost of generic mana. So then we need to replace Skyshroud Archer. But, there are surprisingly no creatures that can tap to target creatures with flying other than green or artifact creatures. And there are no creatures that can tap to target Spirits other than white or artifact creatures. What about blue? We can use Spinal Villain or Norritt to target Spell Queller, and then have three or four mana colors available for Engineered Explosives. Spinal Villain would be better, but I'm not sure if being able to destroy Spell Quellers at the same time will allow an infinite. We could also sacrifice the Explosives for 2CMC to destroy the nontoken Metallurgeon, but that would give up the Spinal Villain, so it seems like we should lose out on that exchange.
Is this headed towards something working?
@Iijil: Does the non-Volute version of the hyperstage go infinite, and if so, can replacing Dual Nature with Splinter Twin and Patron of the Orochi fix things?
With that said, we would also be able to then use Engineered Explosives to kill the Spell Queller, though I don't think that's a problem: killing Spell Queller just fizzles us, because then we don't have a way to stop the spells resolving.
Does that work? It certainly eliminates both the earlier infinites, which rely on being able to use the nontoken Orrery in the middle of a stack of hyperstage token triggers, but there are probably other things we've missed.
Edit: nothing we have so far interacts with Winding Constrictor, so if we can make sure to have 3 Constrictors out when this runs, and be able to rebuild them when they inevitably get offed in the mega or gigastage, we can get 4 charge counters on Engineered Explosives without wasting 4 different colors of Mana. Nothing we have so far uses counters as a resource.
But, the Explosives will then also destroy Opalescence, Bloodbond March, March of the Machines, Horobi, Death's Wail and Su-Chi. We can bounce all of those except Horobi which is something of a pain. We can't bounce Horobi as a Spirit or a flying creature without also being able to bounce Spell Queller too cheaply. And we can't bounce Horobi as a black creature without also being able to bounce Norritt. Hm...
I think there might be an answer for Horobi in an idea I explored but couldn't get working a while back: death triggers. If we can connect a chain of triggers that start with a 4cmc creature dying and ends with targeting a "target creature with flying" dude (let's say still Skyshroud Archer), not only would we be able to bounce Horobi, we would also no longer need to grant anything indestructible, potentially freeing up a card like Child of Alara or Obliterate for the megastage, which might make our lives a lot easier down the line. Back when I thought we couldn't let Engineered Explosives get high enough to kill Metallurgeon, I tried to find a death trigger among magic's 1-drops that would work, but struck out. At 4cmc though....
The best option I can see is Driver of the Dead, which can bring back a 2-drop creature, and also rebuy Skyshroud Archer, so we won't need two copies of both. From there, we need a 1- or 2-drop creature that can target an elf, an archer, or a green creature, that cannot be targeted by anything we have so far (so no flyers, artifact creatures, etc.). We also need a cheap way to kill it without targeting.
Two other notes:
1. Takeno's Cavalry, famously one of the worst cards ever printed, is /so close/ to being exactly what we need here, as a 4-drop that taps to target spirits. If only it didn't specify attacking or blocking...
2. I'm a bit unclear on what differentiates a hyperstage and a megastage from two consecutive hyperstages. In the current deck, why do we have a megastage, and not a second hyperstage? And if we only had two hyperstages, what would be different about the resource flows?
EDIT: Hang on. Horobi would be indestructible here! The only reason Vedalken Orrery isn't is because we had to play it just after a Rebuild, in that hypothetical line. It won't die to explosives.
That begs the question, "can we give Orrery indestructible between the Rebuild resolving and playing Explosives?" I believe the answer is no. In order to give it indestructible, we'd need to cast a Make a Stand copy after the Orrery resolves, but the spell copies from Swarm Intelligence have to go on the stack ABOVE any cards we cast from bouncing Spell Queller. We could activate another Skyshroud Archer, Norritt, whatever, to bounce Spell Queller again and grant indestructible, but then you're wasting an entire Skyshroud Archer token on it, when we only got one extra token out of that line in the first place.
I was actually kinda fuzzy on the difference between two hyperstages and a megastage as well. To see the difference between two hyperstages and a megastage, you can take a look at our older posts where we had two hyperstages, where the second hyperstage had a creature stage, followed by Mobilize and Obliterate at the hyperstage level. Here, we have the Spellweaver Helix hyperstage on the bottom, nothing from the first hyperstage is in that portion of the stack, and the Spellweaver Volute hyperstage just goes directly above it. For the megastage, though, for each time we spend a megastage resource and do the megastage transition, we place a hyperstage. So in the current deck, we spend 3 life to flashback Acorn Harvest, and we trigger Deconstruct, which gives us the mana we need to create a new hyperstage; and we also trigger Worldpurge, which allows us to get our life back, but eliminates all our green mana. A key difference between the two is that in the two hyperstage version, we can't use a cheap resource from the first hyperstage to restart the second; in the old two hyperstage decks, we would have to get back a creature from the second hyperstage to restart the upper stage. In the megastage decks, we can use a Metallurgeon trigger or triggers to restart the upper hyperstage. But this would go infinite unless we made another change, which is that the destructive ability for the megastage has to get rid of all the hyperstage resources. So that made things more difficult, but we were able to work it out.
So what is different about the resource flows is that, with two hyperstages, we can basically operate them independently, so long as after resolving the second hyperstage we get a lot of resources for the first hyperstage. In the megastage everything weaves back and forth, so we have to be more careful; in particular we have to get rid of the hyperstage resources in the megastage transition.
In the meantime, one thought I had for the megastage was Snapcaster Mage to give a sorcery like Devastation Tide flashback, letting us turn blue mana into a wave of Spellweaver Volute triggers. As far as I can see, we have two ways to proceed from there:
1. We can directly have it copy Thoughtweft Gambit, untapping all our Norritts. After that, all we need is a way to produce a constant amount of blue mana from Devastation Tide resolving, and we're most of the way to a gigastage. The problem here is that Thoughtweft Gambit can untap Mimic Vat. I don't think that's a problem at this level, since that mimic vat will disappear come Devastation Tide and Worldpurge time, but if it's possible to get multiple uses out of a Mimic Vat in one of the stages we feed into the mega, then we'll be in some real trouble.
2. We can have it copy a cmc 5+ spell which can target Patron of the Orochi. From there, each instant resolving gives us X Psychic Battle triggers, each of which can bounce and replay Patron, getting X Bloodbond March triggers. When we play Patron, we can counter it, use a trigger to bring it back, then legend rule it to the graveyard with a Dual Nature trigger. From there, we can put Patron on Mimic Vat, make a hasty token, and then repeat with the next Bloodbond March trigger. We can connect green creatures to the hyperstage by either using Skyshroud Archer, Daybreak Ranger, etc., alongside a death trigger, or by using Norritt alongside Krosan Constrictor.
So, the question really is, which is likely to be more restrictive, later on down the line? A search of instants that target with a cmc 5+ suggests that the narrowest we'd be able to get is probably "target nonblack creature", which closes off an awful lot of space. I think the better way is probably Thoughtweft Gambit, and use some color-based stages afterward, then maybe opponent-damage layers?
The more pressing question is, how are we going to get those two blue mana back? A serious problem is that if we include Snapcaster Mage, then we can cast Worldpurge for just white mana. So it doesn't look like this idea can work with Worldpurge. We could switch to Worldfire, but that eliminates life, so we would have to base the megastage off of life. Just using lands that pay life or deal damage to get blue mana won't work, since then we can convert life to blue mana and keep it through the gigastage transition.
Another idea is to use a card that already has flashback, but I don't think there is such a card that will bounce/exile all creatures and artifacts, nor did I find an instant that will bounce/exile all creatures and artifacts. So I don't know how to make this idea work either.
Perhaps your Child of Alara shenanigans is worth exploring now?
Nothing, besides Slingshot Goblin, can target Child of Alara. So we spend one red mana to put X Psychic Battle triggers on the stack. The top ones can all bounce Chronologist, but the bottom one bounces Child of Alara, destroying all nonland permanents. I'm not sure how to turn that into a red mana, but Simian Spirit Guide is probably involved?
It's honestly not much, but it's something to work towards at least. The other option, like you said, is to go for a Worldfire gigastage and a life mega. That honestly seems easier to me, though I'm not sure if that's because it's easier or because I don't know enough to know how difficult it would be.
Edit: for anyone who comes across this later, and so that we have a reference point without having to go to the previous page, the current deck:
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
The proposed token hyperstage: