Actually, I think that still works: even if we make a hasty Rust Tick that way, we still need a Bloodbond March trigger to get it back, and we have to have made one of those already. Though, I guess we can bounce the tick, replay it, sacrifice a goblin and with the new March triggers on the stack... Damn.
Metallurgeon is out because we can't have access to 3 colors of Mana in the megastage: otherwise, we can keep using Engineered Explosives to kill Centaur Safeguards and gain lots of life. So we could fix this by either finding another way to copy Pull and/or move cards from exile to graveyard, or by finding a hyperstage transition that doesn't target artifacts. The latter seems like a better option, because we'll still have blue Mana for Spasm at the end.
For Muzzio, we need to be able to bring Rust Tick back from the exile zone to our library somewhat cheaply. With the nontoken Rust Tick, a hasted Rust Tick token, and a hasted Muzzio token on the battlefield, we can
Tap the Rust Tick token for some Psychic Battle triggers,
Use one to destroy the nontoken Rust Tick and get another hasted token,
Tuck Rust Tick back in the library,
Tap the Muzzio token to bring it back to the battlefield,
Use another Psychic Battle trigger to bounce it back to our hand.
Play the Rust Tick and get Bloodbond March triggers,
Tap the new hasted Rust Tick token to get Psychic Battle triggers,
Use one to destroy Rust Tick and get a Rust Tick token,
Tap the Muzzio token to bring it back to the battlefield,
Use another Psychic Battle trigger to destroy Rust Tick and get another Rust Tick token,
Use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring Rust Tick back to the battlefield.
So we wind up with a profit of one Rust Tick token.
Yeah, I think that plan still has a way to go. The Bone Harvest plan is so convenient for the megastage, and we've spent a lot of time finding that solution. If we can find one, though, it will probably be better to go back to Metallurgeon, cut Izzet Guildmage, and add Mirror of Fate back in. I think that would save some slots.
In the meantime, I've been exploring the possibility of replacing Izzet Guildmage, without much luck: I found a possible method with Spellseeker and Aegis of the Meek to get Pull back, but not only is Spellseeker actually a 2/2 thanks to Dearly Departed, we also need a way to get the Instants back in the library.
The other option I thought about (note: these take up at least one extra card slot, but may still be fine because the Metallurgeon hyperstage takes up less space) was leaving Pull as something Dark-Dwellers casts, and using a creature we can cast from exile, so whenever we need to get a creature to the graveyard, we can imprint this new creature under the same vat, then cast it. If Eternal Scourge were an artifact, this could actually work....
Update: one helpful thing is that we can also use enters-the-battlefield life triggers in the megastage: all the Panharmonicons are gone when the creature comes back. That means we can use Rhox Bodyguard, which has too high a cmc to loop, in the megastage. The problem is that getting it back gives us 3 more life in the gigastage. For the same reasons, we can't have MORE than 3 life to spare post gigastage transition, but 3 is enough to go infinite. So we need to find a way to spend at least 1 life as a necessary part of the megastage transition.
To keep Spellseeker at a 1/1, we could go back from Dearly Departed to Thalia's Lieutenant, I suppose; I believe the reason for putting in Dearly Departed was to get an extra Spirit, which I don't think matters anymore.
Yeah, the fact that Centaur Safeguard is a death trigger means that Worldfire won't trigger it and we won't get 3 life for a gigastage transition, which is nice.
Sadly, I haven't been able to come up with any good new ideas. Maybe I'll look back at the former Doomed Necromancer version, see if we can get that working. We can't get extra creature stages with it, but just having a gigastage deck would be nice.
I've been exploring switching from a life megastage and Mana gigastage to the other way around, and I think I may have found a working configuration:
The megastage can stay exactly the same, except Roar of the Wurm as the sorcery, and Seton, Krosan Protector as the two-of creature. Then we switch to Worldpurge and Rude Awakening for the gigastage, plus Acorn Harvest and the lifegain lands. Then, to get the lands back, we add 2 World Shaper. We have nothing that can target it yet and only 3 colors of Mana even if we keep Bayou, so in order to get our lands back, we have to resolve the stack down to the next megastage down, so Child of Alara can kill World Shaper, making banked explosives irrelevant. We could also start the gigastage transition again, but then we won't have our Bayou back, and Rude Awakening won't do anything.
There are two issues with that configuration which I'm unsure about:
1. We can resolve the gigastage transition, use the green Mana to run through one whole megastage iteration, which will both reanimate the lands without resolving down and regenerate the green Mana. That may not be a problem, because we account for a bunch of banked explosives in the megastage itself, but I'm not sure if it accounts for enough.
2. It completely breaks our setup:Eureka isn't safe in that megastage, and I'm not sure what we could replace it with.
Re Muzzio, he seems incredibly convenient for us, but we still need a way to target him without breaking anything, which is hard: we can't use blue creatures or legendaries because of child, power and toughness for about a billion reasons, humans because of how we're hitting Moggcatcher, and there's nothing in the game that hits Artificers.
So, the gigastage transition will allow us to bring Engineered Explosives and Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to our hand, which allows for two extra uses of Engineered Explosives. I don't remember what we used to soak up the second Engineered Explosives, but I remember that one of them was to bring back Child of Alara. However, we don't need to do that for the gigastage transition. So there might be a problem there.
Okay, I think I might have a solution: first, we switch to 2 Rhox Bodyguard in the megastage, which works because we kill all Panharmonicons. In the megastage, we use Natural Order to get it back: either the copies or the verdant Succession triggers from killing it. That also doubles as a lifegain spell: we can use Natural Order to fetch out a Bodyguard when we still have all our Panharmonicons out, gaining tons of life. After resolving a Worldfire copy, we let a Natural Order underneath resolve to get back the Rhox, which also gains us 3 life.
We also, however, put a Volute on Pull from Eternity, so mixed in with our Swarm Intelligence triggers is a Volute trigger that will cast Pull. We stack it under our Worldfire, and use it to Pull back our one land: Overgrown Tomb. Then we use Morality Shift to get the land in our library, use Skyshroud Claim to search it back out, and use a second Morality Shift to refresh our graveyard.
This way, the only way to get our land back is during the same gigastage transition we exiled it from. Being able to use it means paying 2 life to untap, which means we have to use the Bodyguard trigger to pay for it, and aren't left with enough life to redo the megastage.
I'm confused by the statement "In the megastage, we use Natural Order to get it back". It looks like we would need to trigger Natural Order via Spellweaver Helix, so it would only be only available in the gigastage. Did you perhaps mean Verdant Succession?
Otherwise, it looks good. Something we have to be careful with is using Natural Order to get back both Bodyguards, which would gain 6 life; we have to be sure that leads to a dead end.
Well, it turns out that strategy doesn't work: it has the same problem as some of the earlier versions where it works with one black Mana but with a two black Mana buffer it goes infinite. There's nothing forcing you to get the land back until after you've started gaining life in the gigastage.
On the plus side, if we can get it working, we can ensure Natural Order is safe by just cutting Swarm Intelligence: nothing we have needs it anymore, and that way we only get one Natural Order cast per black Mana, and couldn't get back both creatures if we tried.
EDIT: I think I've found a real solution! Nylea's Disciple. If we can make sure no other green permanents sneak through Worldfire, which seems incredibly easy, we can use the Natural Order to get Disciple back, but it will only gain 2 life, Then, all we need is a permanent that survives Child of Alara, is fetchable in the megastage, and adds 1 devotion to green, and Disciple will gain 3 life in the megastage transition but only 2 in the gigastage, not enough to go infinite.
I think Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle can work as the devotion keeper: if we keep it a land, it won't be killed by Child triggers, and as a 12/12, we can use megastage triggers to bounce it and get Bloodbond March triggers to bring it back. It's also legendary, which I think is important to keep us from being able to make multiples and gain more than 3 in the megastage. If that doesn't work, though, most Theros green gods will do.
That would go infinite with Broken Ambitions, though I'm not sure we have any need for it anymore: I don't see anything that requires moving from library to graveyard in the deck. It also loses the incredibly neat setup structure you get from Reality Spasm and Precursor Golem, but I imagine we can still find a setup that works anyway. It's certainly better than my initial thought of Words of Wisdom to add a bit more efficiency at the same layer.
Edit: some bad news: I've found an infinite in the hyperstage, though it's quite convoluted.
We go through it at first as normal: search out Goblin Dark-Dwellers, get our huge stage, use Rebuild to bounce Engineered Explosives, use it to make a Skyshroud Archer token, and in response to the Verdant Succession triggers, put Dark-Dwellers on Mimic Vat and go through another stage, this time tucking the Archer with Bone Harvest so we can search it out again, as well as bouncing explosives. We resolve down the stack some to get some Metallurgeon tokens, then use the token sniper to bounce the Moggcatcher. We replay Moggcatcher to get Bloodbond March triggers, bring it back once, then use Explosives to kill sniper again and make a token. Now, with Succession triggers on the stack and March triggers underneath, we use some Metallurgeon tokens from the bunch we made earlier to make the necessary hyperstage transition triggers, and use the second Archer token on top of those to kill Moggcatcher, making a token copy. We leave the nontoken Moggcatcher in the graveyard, and use the token to start a new hyperstage, which also tucks the Archer back in the library. This time, however, when we search out the Archer, we'll already have a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers underneath it on the stack, so both the first and second explosives will be available to use to make hasty Moggcatcher tokens. We wind up profiting 1 extra Moggcatcher, and go infinite.
I think we can salvage this by switching to Matsu-Tribe Sniper: that way, when we kill it, we also kill all the Metallurgeon tokens. We can save one through it, but then we have to resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger on Metallurgeon before continuing, and those by definition will be underneath the Verdant Succession triggers, so we'll have to blow a Dark-Dwellers copy first. I believe we can still get a stage per Moggcatcher that way while also regenerating the token count safely. That does mean we can't use Goblin Turncoat anymore, since it's a 2... Clickslither?
We're also off by one in our layer counts at the end: since each copy of Reality Spasm we resolve only makes one Xathrid Gorgon, we don't get a layer for each one we resolve. So I think a better set of final cards would be:
That should get us a layer for each Precursor trigger, for each Windreader Sphinx, for each World at War, for f_{w^4+w4+3}(f_{w^4+w4+2}(x), where X is the number of Windreader Sphinxes we can make precombat, which combined with Reforge the Soul should be pretty damn big.
You can target a lot of creatures with one Reality Spasm, then use Psychic Battle to change the targets to the Xathrid Gorgon Mimic Vat. So I think you do get a layer for just Reality Spasm. No wait, that doesn't work; never mind.
Perhaps Military Intelligence is better than Windreader Sphinx, since enchantments are easier to get back to make more copies.
Edit: Actually, you can make a lot of tapped copies of Xathrid Gorgon; with one hasted Xathrid Gorgon token, you can repeatedly tap it to target the original, create another hasted untapped token, and bring the original back with Bloodbond March. Then you can cast Reality Spasm for a lot and untap all the tapped tokens. So you do get a layer.
I picked Sylvan Echoes / Sentry Oak because it was really easy to trigger those, but if we can get started faster initially with Precursor Golem then that might be better.
Ahhhh, you're right: I'm too used to X having to equal 1 or not mattering. In that case, both configurations have an equivalent layer count, so the considerations are really ease of setup and maximizing our ability to pull cards out of the library without drawing, to fuel a Reforge the Soul layer that will max out the number of Sentry Oak or Military Intelligence we have before the first combat phase (good call with Intelligence, btw, it's also fetchable with Skull of Orm and saves us a card we don't need to draw anymore).
I think the precursor start will still wind up being better because of how easy the setup will be and because it lets us keep Broken Ambitions, something that I think matters again to help us set up without drawing as many cards, but it may wind up being less efficient than a piecemeal approach.
Edit: no updates on the list itself, but Guilds of Ravnica previews have shown a few cards that could be interesting to us.
Thousand-Year Storm, isn't safe in our deck the same way Swarm Intelligence is, but if we ever manage to make it safe, it can give us the same layer total as precursor, but for all Instants and Sorceries. It's also both an engine and a scaling mechanism in standard, so it seems possible in principle we could make another stage combo in standard after rotation, though it's probably best to wait until more cards get printed to try.
Collar the Culprit is a Smite the Monstrous variant that keys off toughness, not power. I haven't looked particularly closely, but it seems possible that we could create a better stage sequence that way than with Smite.
Collar the Culprit is also interesting. I haven't really tried to rejigger the stage sequence in a while, but I recall it seemed pretty hard to extend it.
Darn, I've just found another problem with the hyperstage: even having a 2-drop creature as the tapper isn't enough to make it safe. Metallurgeon is a human too, so it gets flying and can be targeted, so every time we make a new Moggcatcher token, we can also make a new Metallurgeon.
The problem is basically that we use the same resource to both bounce the creature for Bloodbond March and kill it, and we need two instances of it each time. But if we stack things just right, we can save some triggers from an old bounce, and when we get our two tokens from the next run, we can use both to kill.
I think the best way to fix that would be to decouple them: have explosives give us one resource that can kill Moggcatcher, and one resource that can buy it back. I see two ways to do the first one: Scattershot Archer plus some way to give Deathtouch or increase the damage, or Promises Kannushi and Arashi, the Sky Asunder. In both cases, we just have to tuck Dearly Departed in between when Moggcatcher came in and right before we make the token, so only the nontoken Moggcatcher has a +1/+1 counter. Then we mill it back out whenever we need to.
Of the two, Archer seems better, because that way it doesn't lock us out of the SSG stage further down the line. But I still have no idea how to get Moggcatcher back.
Can Angel of Glory's Rise or Bruna, the Fading Light work? I guess the problem is how to reuse those angels. Halo Hunter can target Angels, but how to reuse Halo Hunter... this is tricky, since I've kinda lost the thread on how the hyperstage proceeds.
Edit: So, I had some ideas. Assembly Hall seems like a nice card that can retrieve a creature card, but only for those creature cards that we have multiples of. Unfortunately, we have multiple copies of Nylea's Disciple, and with Assembly Hall we could bring the second back any time we wanted, and play it for more than 3 life. Then I started wondering why we needed two Disciples in the first place - couldn't the Disciple be the target of Bone Harvest rather than Child of Alara? I figured out the reason to be that Nylea's Disciple only died when Child of Alara's death trigger went off, which kills off all nonland permanents including Vedalken Orrery. So we couldn't get the timing right to cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers when Nylea's Disciple is in the graveyard. Unless - we bring back Boggart Mob! Then, we can kill Child of Alara with Boggart Mob and Nylea's Disciple on the battlefield, with Goblin Dark-Dwellers exiled to Boggart Mob. The death trigger kills the Mob, bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers and allowing us to cast Bone Harvest.
Conservatively, that saves us a card at least. Getting more adventurous, that frees us from having to use Child of Alara to soak up an Extra Explosives; which means, we could potentially put in Muzzio, Visionary Architect again. Goryo's Vengeance won't work with Izzet Guildmage, but Time of Need should be okay in conjunction with Bone Harvest. Except, for that to work we need Swarm Intelligence or Thousand-Year Storm, and I believe that caused problems with Natural Order. Natural Order can bring back Nylea's Disciple along with the rest of our green creatures, and gain more than three life. With Centaur Safeguard, Natural Order can sacrifice it for 3 life. So we do seem to have a problem with Natural Order. Was there something wrong with Woodland Bellower? Hmm, I guess we can recycle it for the price of Smite the Monstrous, and so we can fetch Centaur Safeguard at a convenient time, so it doesn't cause us to use up Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Boggart Mob. So, I haven't got this quite to work yet.
In any case, this doesn't really address the problem that you brought up, since of course Muzzio is a Human. I'll keep thinking about it.
I'm not sure about Metallurgeon, but I'm thinking about Muzzio in fact does not go infinite with Scattershot Archer. We get an extra hasted Muzzio token each time we play it anyway; to have the nontoken killed by the Scattershot Archer, we would have to leave the nontoken in play and not sacrifice it to get a hasted token, so we would just be delaying the arrival of our token.
Activate Moggcatcher to tutor out Dark-Dwellers, build a stage, bounce all artifacts including Engineered Explosives. Resolve down until we get some artifacts back, then crack Explosives to make a token copy of our tapping Creature. Use it to bounce Moggcatcher (which has flying thanks to Dearly Departed and Abzan Falconer), then sac Dwellers to put it on a Mimic Vat, and activate it to bounce explosives again. The second one makes a second token, which we use to kill Moggcatcher and make a token, using Bloodbond March triggers from bouncing it earlier to get it back.
Those are some interesting ideas! A few issues though:
Boggart Mob won't work at all I don't think, because we cant let ourselves cast Bone Harvest after a Child trigger: if we do, we can tuck all the green creatures that died, and end up with too much devotion.
Centaur Safeguards isn't safe, because we can just kill it with explosives, so I'm pretty sure it's out too no matter what we do.
The angels do have flying, so they'd get hit too. I wonder if we could work with that somehow?
Edit: I don't think it should! With Metallurgeon, that lets us kill it to make a hasty token, but we also need the nontoken in our hand for the Battle Cry section to work. So we still need a Psychic Battle trigger from lower down. How does the Muzzio step work again?
Also, Time of Need is unsafe: every sorcery with CMC 3 or less goes infinite with Dark-Dwellers and Spellweaver Volute. If we aren't soaking up an Explosives with how we tuck Child, though, which might still be salvageable, we could abandon Guildmage completely, go back to Timepiece and Mirror, and make cmc 2 Instants safe with Dark-Dwellers again.
Okay, I've done some thinking and I think we can avoid needing the Bone Harvest trick to stop infinites, and just go back to the old Timepiece/Mirror. We just have to switch out Clickslither for Goblin Turncoat. We don't have any way to fetch the Turncoat back besides another Moggcatcher activation, and as long as we can make sure we can't make more Moggcatchers without it, we can generate an entire extra Moggcatcher in the megastage transition, and still have to use it to fetch out Turncoat. That also means we can go back to the old Centaur Safeguard plan, by closing off blue mana at those early levels.
Edit: Ugh, you're right, Woodland Bellower is unsafe. We moved off it originally because with the shift to a bant mana configuration at the bottom because of Izzet Guildmage, Safeguard was unsafe so we had to do the crazy Nylea's Disciple shenanigans which can't be regenerated with Bellower. Looks like we had the right idea beforehand.
I think Centaur Safeguard should be safe if we use Muzzio to replace Metallurgeon. (Or in your case, if we replace Izzet Guildmage.) That in turn seems to allow Boggart Mob to be used. But, you are correct that we can't use Time of Need, and Goryo's Vengeance can't be used with Izzet Guildmage, so I don't see how we would use Muzzio in the Izzet Guildmage version.
Actually, I'm not sure that my reasoning for Woodland Bellower being unsafe was correct. It can eliminate the need to use a Goblin Dark-Dwellers to get Centaur Safeguard back, but only at the cost of using a Smite the Monstrous, which requires us to resolve down to the next megastage. So it certainly seems like we're paying out more than we're getting back. Anyways, in the latest deck we aren't banking on using Centaur Safeguard to use up a usage of Engineered Explosives, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Edit: Filling in the ???'s from you deck, I'm assuming we still need something like Scattershot Archer to avoid bouncing Metallurgeon. Then we can have two Moggcatchers plus Assembly Hall to retrieve Moggcatcher from the graveyard. So we have:
I think Bellower still goes infinite if we play two Safeguards, because then we can have both out, bounce Bellower early on, kill Child and gain 6 life, then use Bellower afterwards to search them both out. That problem gets fixed by cutting a Safeguard, though. That doesn't let us cut Verdant Succession yet, but we"re surprisingly close.
Your list is missing a way to produce UG Mana right now, as well as Thousand-Year Storm. The storm can just replace Precursor in the layers, though.
Aside from that, it looks good!
One other update: I think I've found a 5th stage we can squeeze in, instead of some of the top-level cards: Wilderness Hypnotist and Streambed Aquitects. We can kill Hypnotist with Explosives for 4 to make a token copy, which can bounce Simian Spirit Guide but not itself, and can't be targeted by anything below that. Aquitects can target Hypnotist or itself, but has 3 toughness and is a 3 drop so we can't hit it with anything before that. Then, Old Man of the Sea can target Aquitects, since it only has 2 power.
Ooh, nice added stage! It looks like transition creatures don't have to worry about Engineered Explosives, only the stage creatures. So, the updated list is:
Hmm, I don't think so. We're close though. Child of Alara still needs it back, and I'm not sure how we're getting it. Also, Possessed Centaur gets +1/+1 with threshold, making it a 4/4 and targetable with Smite the Monstrous. I'm pretty sure none of that cycle is safe.
Actually, as I look at it, I think the Muzzio plan doesn't work either: we can reanimate it with Goryo's Vengeance, but how are we getting it into the graveyard? That's all right though, I think Metallurgeon/Battle Cry/Goblin Welder is the same number of cards.
Two other small notes: Broken Ambitions needs to switch back to Cephalid Shrine with no Guildmage, and we don't have any way to get Allay back in the hand after Worldfire. The last one's easy enough, though, we can just use some plentiful green mana to flashback/reshuffle Ray of Revelation.
Sure, but that will only get you one Rust Tick per Hyperstage transition, is what I mean. Don't we need N copies of Muzzio to get the Rust Tick count we need?
If we can fix that, though, that Llanowar Dead stage would definitely work. We can just have Eastern paladin lead into it directly. That's probably too many cards alongside Aquitects, but weren't you guys doing a version with access to a sideboard, too?
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Metallurgeon is out because we can't have access to 3 colors of Mana in the megastage: otherwise, we can keep using Engineered Explosives to kill Centaur Safeguards and gain lots of life. So we could fix this by either finding another way to copy Pull and/or move cards from exile to graveyard, or by finding a hyperstage transition that doesn't target artifacts. The latter seems like a better option, because we'll still have blue Mana for Spasm at the end.
How would Muzzio work here, exactly?
Tap the Rust Tick token for some Psychic Battle triggers,
Use one to destroy the nontoken Rust Tick and get another hasted token,
Tuck Rust Tick back in the library,
Tap the Muzzio token to bring it back to the battlefield,
Use another Psychic Battle trigger to bounce it back to our hand.
Then we get another Muzzio somehow (say with Goryo's Vengeance),
Play the Rust Tick and get Bloodbond March triggers,
Tap the new hasted Rust Tick token to get Psychic Battle triggers,
Use one to destroy Rust Tick and get a Rust Tick token,
Tap the Muzzio token to bring it back to the battlefield,
Use another Psychic Battle trigger to destroy Rust Tick and get another Rust Tick token,
Use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring Rust Tick back to the battlefield.
So we wind up with a profit of one Rust Tick token.
The problem is that we need to be able to put Rust TIck back in the library, and also that Goryo's Vengeance can bring Child of Alara back cheaply. So we probably need something besides Bone Harvest to soak up our extra uses of Engineereed Explosives.
In the meantime, I've been exploring the possibility of replacing Izzet Guildmage, without much luck: I found a possible method with Spellseeker and Aegis of the Meek to get Pull back, but not only is Spellseeker actually a 2/2 thanks to Dearly Departed, we also need a way to get the Instants back in the library.
The other option I thought about (note: these take up at least one extra card slot, but may still be fine because the Metallurgeon hyperstage takes up less space) was leaving Pull as something Dark-Dwellers casts, and using a creature we can cast from exile, so whenever we need to get a creature to the graveyard, we can imprint this new creature under the same vat, then cast it. If Eternal Scourge were an artifact, this could actually work....
To keep Spellseeker at a 1/1, we could go back from Dearly Departed to Thalia's Lieutenant, I suppose; I believe the reason for putting in Dearly Departed was to get an extra Spirit, which I don't think matters anymore.
Yeah, the fact that Centaur Safeguard is a death trigger means that Worldfire won't trigger it and we won't get 3 life for a gigastage transition, which is nice.
Sadly, I haven't been able to come up with any good new ideas. Maybe I'll look back at the former Doomed Necromancer version, see if we can get that working. We can't get extra creature stages with it, but just having a gigastage deck would be nice.
The megastage can stay exactly the same, except Roar of the Wurm as the sorcery, and Seton, Krosan Protector as the two-of creature. Then we switch to Worldpurge and Rude Awakening for the gigastage, plus Acorn Harvest and the lifegain lands. Then, to get the lands back, we add 2 World Shaper. We have nothing that can target it yet and only 3 colors of Mana even if we keep Bayou, so in order to get our lands back, we have to resolve the stack down to the next megastage down, so Child of Alara can kill World Shaper, making banked explosives irrelevant. We could also start the gigastage transition again, but then we won't have our Bayou back, and Rude Awakening won't do anything.
There are two issues with that configuration which I'm unsure about:
1. We can resolve the gigastage transition, use the green Mana to run through one whole megastage iteration, which will both reanimate the lands without resolving down and regenerate the green Mana. That may not be a problem, because we account for a bunch of banked explosives in the megastage itself, but I'm not sure if it accounts for enough.
2. It completely breaks our setup:Eureka isn't safe in that megastage, and I'm not sure what we could replace it with.
Re Muzzio, he seems incredibly convenient for us, but we still need a way to target him without breaking anything, which is hard: we can't use blue creatures or legendaries because of child, power and toughness for about a billion reasons, humans because of how we're hitting Moggcatcher, and there's nothing in the game that hits Artificers.
As I recall, we used Flash and Academy Rector for the Worldpurge version. Is Flash a problem?
Edit: Oh right, Flash was no good with Child of Alara.
We also, however, put a Volute on Pull from Eternity, so mixed in with our Swarm Intelligence triggers is a Volute trigger that will cast Pull. We stack it under our Worldfire, and use it to Pull back our one land: Overgrown Tomb. Then we use Morality Shift to get the land in our library, use Skyshroud Claim to search it back out, and use a second Morality Shift to refresh our graveyard.
This way, the only way to get our land back is during the same gigastage transition we exiled it from. Being able to use it means paying 2 life to untap, which means we have to use the Bodyguard trigger to pay for it, and aren't left with enough life to redo the megastage.
Otherwise, it looks good. Something we have to be careful with is using Natural Order to get back both Bodyguards, which would gain 6 life; we have to be sure that leads to a dead end.
On the plus side, if we can get it working, we can ensure Natural Order is safe by just cutting Swarm Intelligence: nothing we have needs it anymore, and that way we only get one Natural Order cast per black Mana, and couldn't get back both creatures if we tried.
EDIT: I think I've found a real solution! Nylea's Disciple. If we can make sure no other green permanents sneak through Worldfire, which seems incredibly easy, we can use the Natural Order to get Disciple back, but it will only gain 2 life, Then, all we need is a permanent that survives Child of Alara, is fetchable in the megastage, and adds 1 devotion to green, and Disciple will gain 3 life in the megastage transition but only 2 in the gigastage, not enough to go infinite.
I think Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle can work as the devotion keeper: if we keep it a land, it won't be killed by Child triggers, and as a 12/12, we can use megastage triggers to bounce it and get Bloodbond March triggers to bring it back. It's also legendary, which I think is important to keep us from being able to make multiples and gain more than 3 in the megastage. If that doesn't work, though, most Theros green gods will do.
Putting it all together, I get:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Pull from Eternity
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Izzet Guildmage
13 Kiora's Dismissal
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Obelisk of Bant
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Moggcatcher
23 Goblin Turncoat
24 Panharmonicon
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Salvaging Station
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Verdant Succession
29 Dearly Departed
30 Abzan Falconer
31 Bone Harvest
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Smite the Monstrous
35 Child of Alara
36 Nylea's Disciple
37 Nylea's Disciple
38 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Titania, Protector of Argoth
44 Natural Order
45 Goblin Welder
46 Morality Shift
47 Bayou
48 Eureka
49 Mox Emerald
50 Polluted Dead
51 Frightshroud Courier
53 Goblin Kites
54 Old Man of the Sea
55 Xathrid Gorgon
56 Precursor Golem
57 Reality Spasm
58 Consecrated Sphinx
59 Reforge the Soul
That even leaves one card slot to play with, though I haven't the faintest idea what we could fit in it.
If we have an extra card, we can try something like
57 Sylvan Echoes
58 Sentry Oak
59 World at War
60 Reforge the Soul
to get something like F_{w^4+w4+3}(F_{w^4+w4+2}(big)).
Edit: some bad news: I've found an infinite in the hyperstage, though it's quite convoluted.
We go through it at first as normal: search out Goblin Dark-Dwellers, get our huge stage, use Rebuild to bounce Engineered Explosives, use it to make a Skyshroud Archer token, and in response to the Verdant Succession triggers, put Dark-Dwellers on Mimic Vat and go through another stage, this time tucking the Archer with Bone Harvest so we can search it out again, as well as bouncing explosives. We resolve down the stack some to get some Metallurgeon tokens, then use the token sniper to bounce the Moggcatcher. We replay Moggcatcher to get Bloodbond March triggers, bring it back once, then use Explosives to kill sniper again and make a token. Now, with Succession triggers on the stack and March triggers underneath, we use some Metallurgeon tokens from the bunch we made earlier to make the necessary hyperstage transition triggers, and use the second Archer token on top of those to kill Moggcatcher, making a token copy. We leave the nontoken Moggcatcher in the graveyard, and use the token to start a new hyperstage, which also tucks the Archer back in the library. This time, however, when we search out the Archer, we'll already have a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers underneath it on the stack, so both the first and second explosives will be available to use to make hasty Moggcatcher tokens. We wind up profiting 1 extra Moggcatcher, and go infinite.
I think we can salvage this by switching to Matsu-Tribe Sniper: that way, when we kill it, we also kill all the Metallurgeon tokens. We can save one through it, but then we have to resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger on Metallurgeon before continuing, and those by definition will be underneath the Verdant Succession triggers, so we'll have to blow a Dark-Dwellers copy first. I believe we can still get a stage per Moggcatcher that way while also regenerating the token count safely. That does mean we can't use Goblin Turncoat anymore, since it's a 2... Clickslither?
We're also off by one in our layer counts at the end: since each copy of Reality Spasm we resolve only makes one Xathrid Gorgon, we don't get a layer for each one we resolve. So I think a better set of final cards would be:
That should get us a layer for each Precursor trigger, for each Windreader Sphinx, for each World at War, for f_{w^4+w4+3}(f_{w^4+w4+2}(x), where X is the number of Windreader Sphinxes we can make precombat, which combined with Reforge the Soul should be pretty damn big.
Perhaps Military Intelligence is better than Windreader Sphinx, since enchantments are easier to get back to make more copies.
Edit: Actually, you can make a lot of tapped copies of Xathrid Gorgon; with one hasted Xathrid Gorgon token, you can repeatedly tap it to target the original, create another hasted untapped token, and bring the original back with Bloodbond March. Then you can cast Reality Spasm for a lot and untap all the tapped tokens. So you do get a layer.
I picked Sylvan Echoes / Sentry Oak because it was really easy to trigger those, but if we can get started faster initially with Precursor Golem then that might be better.
I think the precursor start will still wind up being better because of how easy the setup will be and because it lets us keep Broken Ambitions, something that I think matters again to help us set up without drawing as many cards, but it may wind up being less efficient than a piecemeal approach.
Edit: no updates on the list itself, but Guilds of Ravnica previews have shown a few cards that could be interesting to us.
Thousand-Year Storm, isn't safe in our deck the same way Swarm Intelligence is, but if we ever manage to make it safe, it can give us the same layer total as precursor, but for all Instants and Sorceries. It's also both an engine and a scaling mechanism in standard, so it seems possible in principle we could make another stage combo in standard after rotation, though it's probably best to wait until more cards get printed to try.
Collar the Culprit is a Smite the Monstrous variant that keys off toughness, not power. I haven't looked particularly closely, but it seems possible that we could create a better stage sequence that way than with Smite.
Thousand-Year Storm is nice, if we do need a Swarm Intelligence-type card in the main combo this will get us an extra layer at the end.
Collar the Culprit is also interesting. I haven't really tried to rejigger the stage sequence in a while, but I recall it seemed pretty hard to extend it.
The problem is basically that we use the same resource to both bounce the creature for Bloodbond March and kill it, and we need two instances of it each time. But if we stack things just right, we can save some triggers from an old bounce, and when we get our two tokens from the next run, we can use both to kill.
I think the best way to fix that would be to decouple them: have explosives give us one resource that can kill Moggcatcher, and one resource that can buy it back. I see two ways to do the first one: Scattershot Archer plus some way to give Deathtouch or increase the damage, or Promises Kannushi and Arashi, the Sky Asunder. In both cases, we just have to tuck Dearly Departed in between when Moggcatcher came in and right before we make the token, so only the nontoken Moggcatcher has a +1/+1 counter. Then we mill it back out whenever we need to.
Of the two, Archer seems better, because that way it doesn't lock us out of the SSG stage further down the line. But I still have no idea how to get Moggcatcher back.
Edit: So, I had some ideas. Assembly Hall seems like a nice card that can retrieve a creature card, but only for those creature cards that we have multiples of. Unfortunately, we have multiple copies of Nylea's Disciple, and with Assembly Hall we could bring the second back any time we wanted, and play it for more than 3 life. Then I started wondering why we needed two Disciples in the first place - couldn't the Disciple be the target of Bone Harvest rather than Child of Alara? I figured out the reason to be that Nylea's Disciple only died when Child of Alara's death trigger went off, which kills off all nonland permanents including Vedalken Orrery. So we couldn't get the timing right to cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers when Nylea's Disciple is in the graveyard. Unless - we bring back Boggart Mob! Then, we can kill Child of Alara with Boggart Mob and Nylea's Disciple on the battlefield, with Goblin Dark-Dwellers exiled to Boggart Mob. The death trigger kills the Mob, bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers and allowing us to cast Bone Harvest.
Conservatively, that saves us a card at least. Getting more adventurous, that frees us from having to use Child of Alara to soak up an Extra Explosives; which means, we could potentially put in Muzzio, Visionary Architect again. Goryo's Vengeance won't work with Izzet Guildmage, but Time of Need should be okay in conjunction with Bone Harvest. Except, for that to work we need Swarm Intelligence or Thousand-Year Storm, and I believe that caused problems with Natural Order. Natural Order can bring back Nylea's Disciple along with the rest of our green creatures, and gain more than three life. With Centaur Safeguard, Natural Order can sacrifice it for 3 life. So we do seem to have a problem with Natural Order. Was there something wrong with Woodland Bellower? Hmm, I guess we can recycle it for the price of Smite the Monstrous, and so we can fetch Centaur Safeguard at a convenient time, so it doesn't cause us to use up Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Boggart Mob. So, I haven't got this quite to work yet.
In any case, this doesn't really address the problem that you brought up, since of course Muzzio is a Human. I'll keep thinking about it.
Edit: So, Assembly Hall plus two Moggcatchers will allow us to bring back Moggcatcher cheaply. But, Scattershot Archer can also destroy Metallurgeon or Muzzio as well. It just can't bounce them for more Bloodbond March triggers. Does this go infinite for either?
I'm not sure about Metallurgeon, but I'm thinking about Muzzio in fact does not go infinite with Scattershot Archer. We get an extra hasted Muzzio token each time we play it anyway; to have the nontoken killed by the Scattershot Archer, we would have to leave the nontoken in play and not sacrifice it to get a hasted token, so we would just be delaying the arrival of our token.
Activate Moggcatcher to tutor out Dark-Dwellers, build a stage, bounce all artifacts including Engineered Explosives. Resolve down until we get some artifacts back, then crack Explosives to make a token copy of our tapping Creature. Use it to bounce Moggcatcher (which has flying thanks to Dearly Departed and Abzan Falconer), then sac Dwellers to put it on a Mimic Vat, and activate it to bounce explosives again. The second one makes a second token, which we use to kill Moggcatcher and make a token, using Bloodbond March triggers from bouncing it earlier to get it back.
Those are some interesting ideas! A few issues though:
Boggart Mob won't work at all I don't think, because we cant let ourselves cast Bone Harvest after a Child trigger: if we do, we can tuck all the green creatures that died, and end up with too much devotion.
Centaur Safeguards isn't safe, because we can just kill it with explosives, so I'm pretty sure it's out too no matter what we do.
The angels do have flying, so they'd get hit too. I wonder if we could work with that somehow?
Edit: I don't think it should! With Metallurgeon, that lets us kill it to make a hasty token, but we also need the nontoken in our hand for the Battle Cry section to work. So we still need a Psychic Battle trigger from lower down. How does the Muzzio step work again?
Also, Time of Need is unsafe: every sorcery with CMC 3 or less goes infinite with Dark-Dwellers and Spellweaver Volute. If we aren't soaking up an Explosives with how we tuck Child, though, which might still be salvageable, we could abandon Guildmage completely, go back to Timepiece and Mirror, and make cmc 2 Instants safe with Dark-Dwellers again.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Selesnya Keyrune
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Moggcatcher
23 Goblin Turncoat
24 Panharmonicon
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Salvaging Station
27 ???
28 ???
29 Verdant Succession
30 Dearly Departed
31 Abzan Falconer
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Smite the Monstrous
35 Child of Alara
36 Centaur Safeguard
37 Centaur Safeguard
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Titania, Protector of Argoth
44 Woodland Bellower
45 Goblin Welder
46 Archangel's Light?
47 Bayou
48 Eureka
49 Mox Emerald
50 Polluted Dead
51 Frightshroud Courier
53 Goblin Kites
54 Old Man of the Sea
55 Xathrid Gorgon
56 Precursor Golem
57 Reality Spasm
58 Consecrated Sphinx
59 Reforge the Soul
There's a ways to go here, but it seems doable!
Edit: Ugh, you're right, Woodland Bellower is unsafe. We moved off it originally because with the shift to a bant mana configuration at the bottom because of Izzet Guildmage, Safeguard was unsafe so we had to do the crazy Nylea's Disciple shenanigans which can't be regenerated with Bellower. Looks like we had the right idea beforehand.
The Muzzio combo was explained here.
Actually, I'm not sure that my reasoning for Woodland Bellower being unsafe was correct. It can eliminate the need to use a Goblin Dark-Dwellers to get Centaur Safeguard back, but only at the cost of using a Smite the Monstrous, which requires us to resolve down to the next megastage. So it certainly seems like we're paying out more than we're getting back. Anyways, in the latest deck we aren't banking on using Centaur Safeguard to use up a usage of Engineered Explosives, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Edit: Filling in the ???'s from you deck, I'm assuming we still need something like Scattershot Archer to avoid bouncing Metallurgeon. Then we can have two Moggcatchers plus Assembly Hall to retrieve Moggcatcher from the graveyard. So we have:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Selesnya Keyrune
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Moggcatcher
23 Moggcatcher
24 Assembly Hall
25 Goblin Turncoat
26 Panharmonicon
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Salvaging Station
29 Scattershot Archer
30 Gratuitous Violence
31 Verdant Succession
32 Dearly Departed
33 Abzan Falconer
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Smite the Monstrous
37 Child of Alara
38 Centaur Safeguard
39 Centaur Safeguard
40 Spellweaver Helix
41 Worldfire
42 Spider Spawning
43 Spider Spawning
44 Titania, Protector of Argoth
45 Woodland Bellower
46 Goblin Welder
47 Archangel's Light
48 Bayou
49 Eureka
50 Mox Emerald
51 Polluted Dead
52 Frightshroud Courier
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Reality Spasm
58 Precursor Golem
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Reforge the Soul
Edit: Switching to Muzzio seems to save two cards:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Rust Tick
18 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Moggcatcher
23 Moggcatcher
24 Assembly Hall
25 Goblin Turncoat
26 Panharmonicon
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Scattershot Archer
29 Gratuitous Violence
30 Verdant Succession
31 Dearly Departed
32 Abzan Falconer
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Smite the Monstrous
36 Child of Alara
37 Centaur Safeguard
38 Centaur Safeguard
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Titania, Protector of Argoth
44 Woodland Bellower
45 Archangel's Light
46 Bayou
47 Eureka
48 Mox Emerald
49 Polluted Dead
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Simian Spirit Guide
52 Goblin Kites
54 Xathrid Gorgon
55 Reality Spasm
56 Precursor Golem
57 Sylvan Echoes
58 Sentry Oak
59 World at War
60 Reforge the Soul
I think Bellower still goes infinite if we play two Safeguards, because then we can have both out, bounce Bellower early on, kill Child and gain 6 life, then use Bellower afterwards to search them both out. That problem gets fixed by cutting a Safeguard, though. That doesn't let us cut Verdant Succession yet, but we"re surprisingly close.
Your list is missing a way to produce UG Mana right now, as well as Thousand-Year Storm. The storm can just replace Precursor in the layers, though.
Aside from that, it looks good!
One other update: I think I've found a 5th stage we can squeeze in, instead of some of the top-level cards: Wilderness Hypnotist and Streambed Aquitects. We can kill Hypnotist with Explosives for 4 to make a token copy, which can bounce Simian Spirit Guide but not itself, and can't be targeted by anything below that. Aquitects can target Hypnotist or itself, but has 3 toughness and is a 3 drop so we can't hit it with anything before that. Then, Old Man of the Sea can target Aquitects, since it only has 2 power.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
20 Goryo's Vengeance
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Moggcatcher
24 Moggcatcher
25 Assembly Hall
26 Goblin Turncoat
27 Panharmonicon
28 Engineered Explosives
29 Scattershot Archer
30 Gratuitous Violence
31 Verdant Succession
32 Dearly Departed
33 Abzan Falconer
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Smite the Monstrous
37 Child of Alara
38 Centaur Safeguard
39 Spellweaver Helix
40 Worldfire
41 Spider Spawning
42 Spider Spawning
43 Titania, Protector of Argoth
44 Woodland Bellower
45 Archangel's Light
46 Bayou
47 Eureka
48 Mox Emerald
49 Polluted Dead
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Simian Spirit Guide
52 Goblin Kites
53 Wilderness Hypnotist
54 Steambed Aquitects
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Reforge the Soul
Can we add copies of Scattershot Archer and Centaur Safeguard, and cut Verdant Succession and Woodland Bellower, leaving Assembly Hall to take care of retrieval? If so, I can add a sixth stage, like so:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
20 Goryo's Vengeance
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Moggcatcher
24 Moggcatcher
25 Assembly Hall
26 Goblin Turncoat
27 Panharmonicon
28 Engineered Explosives
29 Scattershot Archer
30 Scattershot Archer
31 Gratuitous Violence
32 Dearly Departed
33 Abzan Falconer
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Smite the Monstrous
37 Child of Alara
38 Centaur Safeguard
39 Centaur Safeguard
40 Spellweaver Helix
41 Worldfire
42 Spider Spawning
43 Spider Spawning
44 Titania, Protector of Argoth
45 Archangel's Light
46 Bayou
47 Eureka
48 Mox Emerald
49 Llanowar Dead
50 Everglove Courier
51 Possessed Centaur
52 Eastern Paladin
53 Frightshroud Courier
55 Goblin Kites
56 Old Man of the Sea
57 Xathrid Gorgon
58 Reality Spasm
59 Thousand-Year Storm
60 Reforge the Soul
Actually, as I look at it, I think the Muzzio plan doesn't work either: we can reanimate it with Goryo's Vengeance, but how are we getting it into the graveyard? That's all right though, I think Metallurgeon/Battle Cry/Goblin Welder is the same number of cards.
Two other small notes: Broken Ambitions needs to switch back to Cephalid Shrine with no Guildmage, and we don't have any way to get Allay back in the hand after Worldfire. The last one's easy enough, though, we can just use some plentiful green mana to flashback/reshuffle Ray of Revelation.
So, all together, I get something like:
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 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Ray of Revelation
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Selesnya Keyrune
18 Metallurgeon
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Moggcatcher
23 Moggcatcher
24 Assembly Hall
25 Goblin Turncoat
26 Panharmonicon
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Scattershot Archer
29 Gratuitous Violence
30 Verdant Succession
31 Dearly Departed
32 Abzan Falconer
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Smite the Monstrous
36 Child of Alara
37 Centaur Safeguard
38 Spellweaver Helix
39 Worldfire
40 Spider Spawning
41 Spider Spawning
42 Titania, Protector of Argoth
43 Woodland Bellower
44 Archangel's Light
45 Goblin Welder
46 Bayou
47 Eureka
48 Mox Emerald
49 Polluted Dead
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Simian Spirit Guide
52 Goblin Kites
54 Streambed Aquitects
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Reforge the Soul
What are we missing?
If we can fix that, though, that Llanowar Dead stage would definitely work. We can just have Eastern paladin lead into it directly. That's probably too many cards alongside Aquitects, but weren't you guys doing a version with access to a sideboard, too?