Yeah, the Rowan Kenrith emblems were the second layer. When you activate the populate ability, you get a lot of copies via Rowan Kenrith; each one takes X Doubling Seasons to 2^X Doubling Seasons, so after X copies you get roughly 2^^X. You can use the last ability to create more Rowan Kenriths to update the emblem number.
so i am able to keep the populate ability updated but rowan did all activated abilities and that part will be tougher. if i can convert them to creatures i can still do it but if not i will lose a pretty hefty amount of value. i think if i don't run any lands that can tap for mana i should be ok turning 0 cmc things into creatures(assuming i can keep them alive). if i do this i can't be allowed to get back artifacts from my graveyard(i could get black lotus, animate it, then populate it and go infinite) but that i cannot do currently anyway.
the solution i came up with is illusionist's bracers, masterwork of ingenuity and hammer of nazahn. i play hammer and let it enter with nothing special going on. i then play bracers and instantly equip it to my guildmage. i then play MoI and let it enter as itself, and then animate it using Karn, silver golem. then i can populate the masterwork for 4 mana and get original + bracers amount of that ability. as the masterwork tokens resolve i have them enter as bracers, and equip them instantly via hammer back to the guildmage. this lets be able to update the populate ability copies at instant speed whenever i want to for 4 mana. i do need to do this for each permanent i want to activate but its only 1 activation to bring new ones up to date because whatever the current amount is will make all previous generations basically non relevant because of how large the scaling will become.
also i came up with some kinda cool tricks we can do in the standard build as well. i'll post those later.
March doesn’t work we’ll unfortunately. Animated equipment cannot be equipped. I could drop masterwork and animate a single bracers, that would save a slot i guess. I might just add in mirrorworks. It competes with dual nature but it’s so handy and a clean fix. I’m currently not playing CC or SI in my list. They just aren’t as powerful as the other things so I cut them. One thing I did think of when considering CC/SI waves was look at how many copies of MoI I needed to leave unused and animated to keep up the layer level gains that Rowan got me. Not sure it’s worth noting without a token maker spell but if they go back in I’ll probably need to figure something out for copying the unanimated bracers etc. I’ll post an updated but still unfinished list tomorrow.
As far as the standard list goes I’m not sure this helps at all but we can give our opponents a copy of polyraptor. This is doable with a 3 card set up of playing captive audience, then rampage of the clans and then switcheroo. Once that is done we can damage our opponents polyraptor and get thier tokens by playing crafty cutpurse. With global damage effects it should give us quite a few extra copies. Depending on when we cast switcheroo compared to our thousand-year storm count we could give them many copies. As we loop the deck with emergency powers we could continue doing this for many iterations to give them many^many copies. Also a good way to be sure we can draw all the cards is playing something like niv-mizzet, parun or nezahal, primal tide and then cap the draws with underrealm lich so we don’t deck out. A good way to be able to play the entire deck in one go is play electrodominance for our highest cmc and let TYS copy it enough to play the entirety of the deck. Just a few ideas for now
Some interesting ideas! Giving the opponent a Polyraptor is intriguing, although I don't really know what to do with it that would be better than having it on our side. Maybe some fighting?
The problem with cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parrun is that it will mess up our spell chain, since any card can then fetch any other. To avoid this, we would have to prevent cards going back into our library - but most of our chain aside from Emergency Powers gets cards from the library. It would be nice to find some sort of card drawer that was necessarily restricted in some way - perhaps depending on combat, or the opponent's library.
Electrodominance looks very good, we can preserve the other colors besides red.
Edit: Seafloor Oracle looks quite good. Get 3 or 4 of them out and attack, draw at least 9 or 16 cards.
Edit: Pfft, I'm being an idiot. We don't have Vedalken Orrery! So any sorcery that we try to fetch will be fetched exactly once, then it's stuck in our hand. So we need everything but the last spell in the chain to be instant speed.
Edit: We can extend the chain by one again. This time the base spell is Spit Flame, which we can use to damage a Polyraptor, creating all of one token copy. But that's good enough to start with. Spit Flame can be brought back to our hand when a Dragon comes into the battlefield under our control. So, the next spell up will be Yawgmoth's Vile Offering which can bring a random Dragon back onto the battlefield. YVO is a sorcery, but we can give it flash with Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage. We can destroy our Dragon using a spare copy of Spit Flame, to be brought back again with YVO. YVO then leads into Sphinx's Insight, and then Emergency Powers, as before.
5 Mycosynth lattice - enters nothing happens
6 Opalesence
7 mirrorworks - so this will be useful for getting some non creature tokens, and does add more value to non token creatures entering too
8 Dual nature -
8 Doubling season -
9 abyssal persecutor - we make a lot of these. we don't need many but we do need 1 to keep our opponent alive
10 Runaway steam-kin - with adding MW we start slightly faster to this point
11 pandemonium - one of our damage dealers, self triggers and importantly we get some counters on RSK. unless we will be doing it in preparation of casting a red spell we will always leave at least 1 counter on each RSK
12 inexorable tide - so now we have our RSK engine fully operational
13 Vitu-ghazi guildmage - and now we have the populate engine online as well
14 vedalken orrery - now we operate at instant speed
15 mirror gallery - cool so now we can have multiples of legendary stuff
16 karn, silver golem - so now we can turn anything into a creature that isn't already, which then allows us to populate those once we can get a token copy of them.
17 hammer of nazahn -
18 illusionist's bracers - here we have our replacement for our rowan kenrith layer
19 rings of brighthearth - so this is bit of a weird choice to have rings and bracers, but sometimes one of them isn't that good and the other is excellent. this way we have both and always have the one we want. we can split our copies of populate(or other abilities) and/or triggers in two groups, bracers and rings . in both cases we will use the all but the last few populates to just make more DS but will use one of each group to make more of that group (more rings or more bracers). we will do this in conjunction with making whatever else we need of want with this populate ability at the very very end of our mana supply.
20 precursor golem - yup
21 arcane adaptation - now we make everything golems and any targeted spell will scale to our current board state
22 thousand-year storm - now we have our spell multiplier
23 thopter engineer - we have haste, and an added body to boot
24 boon reflection - our life gain can now be super powered
25 cradle of vitality - so this lets us update our life gain between each trigger of it by using the counter making trigger and put them back onto our RSKs and use that to update both boon reflection and craddle on every life gain trigger.
26 goblin bombardment - we now have a sac outlet
27 firesong and sunspeaker(FS+SS) - so this makes our red damage spells better. this card allows me to get 2 separate loops out of 1 spell.
28 chandra's phoenix(CP) - we will play this out and then sac off all token copies first and then the original.
29 darksteel forge - our creatures are now indestructible
30 harness the storm -
31 willbender -
32 ixidron - now our harness loop is up and running
33,34 fiery confluence - so we will actually choose all 3 modes on each of the castings of this spell. this means because of how its worded(there is only 1 target) that golem will spread this spell. because of FS+SS it also has lifelink. so we get a ton of stuff going on here. we get a loop going with CP for a bit of damage and cast trigger and a bunch of life. we will resolve our first CP loop and then resolve our first life gain trigger. before we let the next stuff resolve though we will introduce another thing we can loop.
35 wydwen, the biting gale - so now we can see that for each life we gain we will be able to loop castings of WBG. this we can do for each instance of life gain and an amount of times equal to the amount of life we gained. so we cast WBG and get ready to loop some more. but we just cast a multicolored spell so lets loop off that too. as with CP we will be sac'ing of our extra token copies of WBG to bombardment to get some value out of them.
36 lobber crew - so right now this is where my loop ends. every time we cast WBG we untap our army of lobbers and hit for some damage. this is as far as i've gotten. i had another layer after this(well 2 actually) but i found an infinite so i'm back to this point. untapping crew has to be able to better than just 1 damage(or bracers/rings amount of damage). i'm still looking for options but i'm sure i can move past this.
37+ so i actually have another loop sort of figured out. it means me moving away from my twister loops. i'm gonna be using rift sweeper to get back surreal memoir. in the current list i don't have a single instant though, so it doesn't do me much good atm. at first i was using an instant to gain me life but FC w/ FS+SS is pretty bonkers so i decided to use that as my life gain option. i haven't found a suitable card yet but i'm sure i can find something. i could also branch off and start a chain off of the casting of a red creature via the CP loop. that's also an option i need to look into. the way i was going to limit rift sweeper and memoir was to have a draw engine that scales to my team. this draw cannot be creature based and cannot be an instant as it would go infinite w/ sweeper and memoir, it also cannot gain me life. i did find press for answers for a good draw engine as it scales off my team size and then scales off DS through the clue tokens. also this way it is a bit easier to stack my loops inside of each other because i can control when the next draw will happen(sort of). the clues are fine atm because i cannot populate them as if i make them a creature they die to state based checks before i can try to copy them. i do have to be careful about my buffs though to ensure this stays true. i could look at using combat as neheb, the eternal scales on total life loss per post combat main phases and that would be my first instance of scaling off of my damage output, so it is an interesting possibility.
edit: i forgot to mention that i was going to include 2 copies of quasiduplicate to help support the memoir/sweeper loop by letting me jumpstart one of the quasiduplicates to get a copy of memoir in my yard where we can abuse it with our harness loop. i figured 2 copies would be nice to take advantage of the harness end of things. it's also a sorcery so it doesn't interfere with memoir end of things.
I'm just going to mention one thing before I analyze the deck further. I just realized that Inexorable Tide just causes spells cast to be at Layer 3, not Layer 4. This is because Inexorable Tide puts counters on all Runaway Steam-Kins at the same time. This means they get affected by exactly the same number of Doubling Seasons, so if you have R Runaway Steam-Kins and D Doubling Seasons, Inexorable Tide resolves as a single step that adds R * 2^D counters in total to your RSKs. This is what we call a "multiplicative effect", and, while that sounds like it is good, what it means is that the layers do not stack; having lots of Doubling Seasons with one RSK would count for a layer, and having lots of RSKs with no Doubling Seasons would count for a layer, but having them both is still just a single layer, it just means that the number to the right of the arrows is bigger, but that advantage will disappear as you go up in layers, as I've tried to show in my previous analyses. So Inexorable Tide is at layer 3.
Contrast that with what happens when you cast a red spell; then, every Runaway Steam-Kin will trigger, and rather than all resolve at once, all those triggered abilities go on the stack to be resolved one at a time. So, you resolve one RSK trigger, and get a whole bunch of counters because of your number of Doubling Seasons. You can then start removing the counters to get red mana and populate, increasing the Doubling Seasons by a lot (at the Layer 2 level). Then, when you resolve the next RSK trigger, there will be a whole bunch more counters created because there are so many more Doubling Seasons in play now. So that is exactly what it means for layers to stack.
So in short, it would be better to go back to Painter's Servant, provided that that does not cause an infinite; if it does, then we will need red spells to get to Layer 4.
And, just as I'm typing this, I realize that you can have a whole bunch of Inexorable Tides, and they will all resolve one at a time. So I'm being silly again. Well, I'll leave it because the above explains why Inexorable Tide is still at Layer 4 and not Layer 5, even though we can add counters to all RSKs at once and not just one.
as far as the standard deck goes, well we still a few powerhouses to work with. we still get marwyn, the nurturer to let us make a lot of mana. we can even use helm of the host to get multiples of her if we take a few turns of set up(i believe your last attempt went off on t6?). we can pair her with mishra's self-replicator and arcane adaptation to make a lot of elves entering on each cast trigger of replicator. this let's us generate a bunch of mana we can sink into abilities or re-buyable spells such as repeating barrage or kazarov, sengir pureblood which can be pointed at our polyraptors. we can get even more play through's of the deck using 1 copy of clear the mind and the 4x enhanced surveillance. as long as we can find a way to draw our spells we can loop clear mind inside of each emergency power copy and each iteration of enhanced surveillance. we could even use gaea's blessing to act both as a re-shuffler and a draw engine. we can use mass untapper's like rally to battle and rallying roar to get lots of mileage out of marwyn's mana making. we can also use gift of growth as both an untap(and buff) option for our elf queen or to make our raptor's more durable.
as good as forerunner is, it might be even better to just take them out and make our polyraptors indestructible and just point a bunch of damage at them. we also get numerous clones and a few token copy makers as well so we have plenty of ways to get a bunch of them to start off.
yeah i knew tide likely wouldn't be a full layer but i was curious whether i would want more RSK or more tides. not sure it matters as the are kinda dependent on each other to work at all. it was just to open up being able to look at color limited things but i haven't even gotten that far yet lol
Layer 8: Casting from you hand gets many castings from your graveyard thanks to the Harness the Storm combo
As you can see, the Wydwen / Lobber Crew combo does not add any layers here. Since Lobber Crew just deals damage, it doesn't connect to any of the lower layers, so Wydwen / Lobber Crew are part of their own separate chain that don't lengthen the main chain.
Layers 11-12: Casting Press for Answers gets many copies
Layer 13: Casting Press for Answers from your hand gets many castings from your graveyard
So you're up to layer 13! Not bad at all.
And yeah, you definitely want more Inexorable Tides, since they resolve one at a time, whereas Runaway Steam-Kins will be populated all at once. (They get counters one at a time from red spells, but Inexorable Tides is a teeny bit better even then because you get counters on all RSKs for each resolution rather than just one.)
yeah so with what ever manner we use to get cast trigger counters on RSK we do some really gross stuff.
on cast we stack all of our counter making triggers. we let 1 resolve and use those to populate more DS. then the next resolves, amplified by more DS and we repeat. on top of this once illusionist's bracers comes online we will be using bracers to amplify the populate ability itself. so we use all but 1 populate to make populate better on each activation of populate and then the last to make DS before we activate populate again. this way we continuously update our populate ability as well as our DS count to. and this is true on any counter adding event. we can update our DS yes, but we can update our DS making capability as well. previously it was just casting spells but now we can do it with life gain triggers too. i'm not sure cradle of vitality is actually a layer but if its not its still pretty good.
edit: sorry on updating populate it should be DS->populate update->last one on DS ..... i think
edit: well if we include riftsweeper in the final 13 layer deck we can convert each clue into rings number of cards draws each of which will be memoir which lets us repeat the life gaining chain. its limited because i can't convert life->clues. also even if we can't connect WBG to the lobber crew stuff just yet, she still gets us multiple casting/RSK layers during each of our life gain events. this is what we gained the life for after all. this should be a layer to herself ... i think if i understand the layers ... or are WBG and cradle kind of competing for the same life gain layer?
edit: we need to include at least 1 way to gt memoir into our yard. quasiduplicate was going to be my choice as it gets a nice spread from PG and can't get picked up by memoir. we only need 1 but we could do 2 to loop it with harness, then jump start one of them to get memoir from hand into yard where we can cast it(via harness) without exiling itself to allow it to be looped via harness many times.
Oh yes, I assumed all of that! Basically, having the populate ability, and having turned everything into creatures, means that we can pretty much assume everything will be updated, at the precise right time when it will be most beneficial. So we don't have to worry about some permanent not updating. This is very convenient, but on the minus side, it cuts off all creatures from being a limiter further up the chain, just like Mycosinth Lattice removed different colors of mana and artifacts in particular from being limiters further up the chain. So those are things that you might consider changing up if you _really_ want to push things.
Yeah, Stakfish's deck that exceeded Graham's number went off on turn 6. I think in current Standard we should be able to go off on turn 4, even if we go first. Something like the following:
Draw a card, then attack with all four Merfolk, and draw 12 more cards. With 13 cards in our hand, I don't forsee any further problems; we can first play an Electrodominance for 4. We can play three Runaway Steam-Kins, and then three red spells of any kind, to generate 9 mana; this will allow us to play another Electrodominance for X = 7, which is the most we will need. If we need more cards, we can play Garna, the Bloodflame and Response // Resurgence (these can be two of the red spells that we played) and attack with say another 3 Seafloor Oracles (using Quasiduplicates, perhaps) to draw another 18 cards, then tap them to draw one more. So finishing by turn 4 should be no problem, unless we're really hurting for deck space (which is certainly not the case now!).
I'm pretty happy with turn 4; of course our damage is no where near the Graham's number deck, but I doubt we will be able to replicate that. Maybe a few more layers will be good enough.
Edit: Just saw your last couple of edits. So yeah, I got fixated on the life gain chain and forgot that Wydwen, the Biting Gale would trigger the Inexorable Tides. So we have the casting of a spell at Layer 4, then a resolution of an Abuna's Chant (or whatever life-gaining instant you want to use) will be Layer 5 thanks to Boon Reflection. Then the casting of Abuna's Chant gets layers 6-8 and Surreal Memoir gets layers 9-10. Then I guess I forgot about being able to use Rings of Brighthearth on the clue tokens, so that gets layer 11, and then Press for Freedom gets layers 12-15.
I'm confused by your last edit: Why do we want to get Surreal Memoir into our yard, I thought we wanted to draw it with Clue tokens, and how would Quasiduplicate fix that?
edit: we will need 2 copies of memoir, might not have mentioned that part
we want memoir in yard to be able to loop them via harness. this means each riftsweeper and clue draw doesn't get us 1 or 2 casts of memoir it gets us harness amounts of casts. quasiduplicate was so we can get memoir in the yard to begin with(via discard to jumpstart). we need a way to discard it because w/ rebound it will self exile and not be loopable with harness if we just cast the 2nd copy from hand. it requires an extra step to set up but this keeps it from going infinite but still allows for harness loops with a card that normally self exiles. this works because rebound doesn't trigger the self exile if it isn't cast from hand. we can still get 1 copy from exile into the deck and draw it again off our clue draws, which is all we need to get the harness loop going. we just need to set this up once as after that we will be retrieving just 1 copy to start a harness loop when we do cast it.
i'll look at what that standard list start can do for us. still on looking through the cards to see what we can abuse
std edit: electrodominance isn't quite _that_ good. we don't get all spells X or less, just 1 per copy of ED. it only get's really explosive in conjunction with thousand-year storm. i like the card draw engine tho, that'll come in quite handy i'm sure. probably will be turn 5 or 6 with all turns before that just used as set up. i was looking for a way to turn TYS into a creature but couldn't find a way. we can make artifacts into creatures with skilled animator but not sure that will help us as much
advice edit: yeah i am aware the ease of set up with my deck will likely be a limiting factor. i have kept it possible to include lands in this version. that opens up playing things like tolarian academy, serra's sanctum, and gaea's cradle. having access to these lets me potentially eliminate lattice at some point and still be able to pay for most if not all my abilities. at that point i could make 4/5 of wburg so getting into some segregating might be possible. i guess as a bit of nod to that fact, exactly what needs to be accomplished to get to stage level scaling? i know i've kinda wrapped my head around the layers but i'm pretty sure i'm a long way from the multiple stage decks you guys are working on. just curious what needs to happen to get from multi layer decks to actually dealing in true stages?
Oh right, with Harness the Storm the original instant/sorcery will still be on the stack when the Harness the Storm triggers get resolved. So that requires either a second copy, or countering the original spell. I guess having a second copy will free up more options, since being able to counter spells will limit what you can do with your spell chain; for example, you could add Timetwister to your deck, but being able to counter Timetwister would make it go infinite. But yeah, two other options are countering, and milling the Surreal Memoir.
Heh, goes to show that I'm narrowly thinking about this challenge and not about whether a card is reasonably powered; obviously Electrodominance would be too good the way I was thinking. I'll try to cook up a turn 6 or turn 7 start.
A stage is process that can take X of a resource and turn it into X layers; for a long time, this was just a pipe dream. I actually stumbled upon the first such combo quite by accident. There are basically just two ways to make a stage process that we know of. One is the Bloodbond March / Psychic Battle combo that I found; tstorm then found a variant where Bloodbond March is replaced by Possibility Storm. The other is the complicated combo created by Stakfish in his Graham's number-beating Standard deck. It really is rather intricate, and the details can be found at his website. The Bloodbond March version is simpler, and appears to be more conducive to creating many stages. The post where I first described it is here. I guess I can try to make a more updated description now.
So, like I said, the key parts are Bloodbond March and Psychic Battle. (Psychic Battle can be replaced or augmented by Grip of Chaos, and in some cases by Rings of Brighthearth.) We have X of some resource that we are going to turn into 2X layers; the resource can be either mana of some color, or some type of creature token. (Credit goes to Iijil for discovering how to use tokens as the resource rather than mana) For this example, let's use Metallurgeon tokens, which are what is used as the primary stage in our megastage and gigastage decks.
So we have X hasted Metallurgeon tokens, and at least X white mana. We also have the
cards on the battlefield, and we have managed to create a bunch of token copies of all our stuff, in particular multiple copies of Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March.
So, we first cast our nontoken Metallurgeon from our hand. This triggers all the Bloodbond Marches. They go on top of the Metallurgeon spell though, so put the Cephalid Shrine trigger on top of the Bloodbond March triggers, and use it to counter the Metallurgeon spell, sending it to the graveyard. We now use the topmost Bloodbond March trigger to bring the Metallurgeon to the battlefield. So now we have Metallurgeon on the battlefield, and a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack.
Next, before we resolve any of the remaining Bloodbond March triggers, we tap a Metallurgeon token, targeting the nontoken Metallurgeon. This activates multiple copies of Psychic Battle, Cowardice, and Horobi, Death's Wail triggers.
Now, when we have both Cowardice and Horobi, Death's Wail in play, any time we target anything both will trigger. Since the triggers come into existence simultaneously, we can order them on the stack however we so choose. The one that we put on the top is the one that will be executed; since the target of the ability becomes a new permanent when it changes zones, all of the other abilities will fizzle. What this means is, whenever we target any creature, we have the option of either bouncing it back to our hand, or destroying it and sending it to the graveyard, our choice. (If we want the original ability to take effect, we need to remove both Cowardice and Horobi, by the way.)
So, we will put a Cowardice trigger on top, and bounce the nontoken Metallurgeon back to our hand. On the stack is a bunch of Bloodmarch triggers on the bottom, and a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers above those (intermixed with a bunch of Cowardice and Horobi triggers that don't matter anymore, so we will ignore them).
Now, we repeat the process: We replay the Metallurgeon and counter it, getting a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers above our previous bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Then we tap a second Metallurgeon token to bounce the Metallurgeon back to our hand, and create a second bunch of Psychic Battle triggers above the second bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. We continue this process until we run out of tokens to activate.
After all is said and done, the stack looks like this:
(first to resolve)
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
... (repeat X times)
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
(last to resolve)
and we have the nontoken Metallurgeon on the battlefield. So now the stage is set up, and it's time to start resolving it.
The first thing we resolve is the top group of Psychic Battle triggers. For all but one of those triggers, we will use them to bounce other animated artifacts, in order to make more enchantments and other stuff. If we bounce Azorious Keyrune, we can replay it, and it gets Dual Nature triggers. We can spend three mana to cast Allay with buyback, and that allows us to bounce many enchantments thanks to all the Psychic Battles in play. We use one to bounce March of the Machines, and the rest can bounce Copy Enchantment to keep replaying, doubling the number of Dual Natures each time. And with March of the Machines gone, we can tap all of our Keyrunes to get a bunch of mana, which can be used to cast Allay with buyback many times. So we get a couple of layers already, but this doesn't mean too much; it just means our stage is worth 2X+2 layers or so rather than 2X, which is no longer a big deal at this level. Of course, with our last playing of Copy Enchantment we will copy Psychic Battle.
We have saved one Psychic Battle trigger from our Metallurgeon token, and that is to target Metallurgeon, except instead of putting Cowardice on top of the stack and bouncing the Metallurgeon, we will put the Horobi trigger on top of the stack and send it to the graveyard. This triggers our Mimic Vats; we will imprint the Metallurgeon on one, and tap it to create a hasted Metallurgeon token. After than, we can use Mirror of Fate to put it into our library, and use Perpetual Timepiece to put it into our graveyard. But that's as far as we can get with it; it's stuck in our graveyard until we can get to a Bloodbond March trigger. For this reason, each stack of Psychic Battle triggers can only create one token copy of Metallurgeon, because we need to resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to get it back. This is important, since otherwise we could keep increasing our number of tokens and going infinite.
So, next we resolve the topmost Bloodbond March trigger of the top BM group, and bring it back to the battlefield. We can now tap our newly created Metallurgeon token, and we get Psychic Battle triggers, but now we get way more Psychic Battle triggers than before, because we created many more Psychic Battles while resolving the previous group of Psychic Battles. So our stack differs from before in that our top PB group has way more triggers than before, and our top BM group has decreased by one.
We do the same thing again; each time, the top PM group increases enormously, and the top BM group decreases by one. Eventually, the second BM group will run out. At this point, we do _not_ activate our lone Metallurgeon token! That would create another PB group above the second PB group, with no BM group in between. So our number of groups will have decreased by two, which will cause our whole combo to fizzle out faster than it should. Instead, we save our Metallurgeon token, and resolve the topmost PB trigger from the second PB group, to bounce the Metallurgeon. Then we replay the Metallurgeon, and get many more Bloodbond March triggers than we had before (since we remembered to create more Bloodbond Marches just before this step). Then we use the top BM trigger to bring the Metallurgeon back to the battlefield, and now we tap our token to create more PB triggers.
So now our stack is different in that the first PB group and the first BM group are way bigger than before, but the second PB group has decreased by one.
You can see how this continues. We will keep resolving our top PB group and top BM group, and after they are fully resolved we lose a trigger from the second PB group. When that second PB group is fully resolved, we dip into the second BM group to create a much larger second PB group, and so on down the line.
Eventually, we will completely run out of all of our triggers. We will still have hasted Metallurgeons, since as we resolve down the stacks we build our token reserve back up, but now our Metallurgeon is on the battlefield. So we can build our stack back up, but this time the bottom Bloodbond March group is gone, so we have a stack of 2X-1 groups rather than 2X. Then, after the 2X-1 stack is fully resolved, we can build up a 2X-2 group, and so on, until finally the stack is cleared, and all our untapped hasted Metallurgeons are gone - but we have Ackermann many Psychic Battles and Bloodbond Marches!
Just to count - each time we resolve a Psychic Battle trigger from the top group, we take the number of Psychic Battles from X to about 2^^X. We can resolve X of these before having to dip into the second group, so that takes X to 2^^^X for the whole top PB group. This uses up just one BM trigger from the top BM group, so the whole top BM group takes X to 2^^^^X. Then the second PB group takes X to 2^^^^^X, and so on, until the bottom group is at Layer 2X+2.
So that's it, that's how my version of the stage works. Once you have absorbed this, I can try to help you with hyperstages and beyond. Stakfish has a great summary of the state of things in a post from not too long ago.
ok that more or less makes sense. converting x resources into x layers was the most understandable to me. so if a action get us xy and a layer gets x^x(and a strong layer maker gets y(x^x)) then a stage gets (x^x)^x. very rudimentary but i think i get it. a tall task indeed to get to stage level scaling, but at least i know what you guys are talking about now.
fwiw i can't make harness the storm work off one spell. i need at least one target in yard as i cast from hand(same with runic repetition as i need a legal target to cast it in the first place). if there is no spell in yard then harness won't trigger at all, so countering it won't work(how you want anyway, might be able to add layers with counters tho). it relies on having targets where stuff like bloodbond march and surreal memoir don't, they just get put onto the stack. they can't really fizzle, they can just accomplish nothing if we can't put something there for them to get back.
edit: i wonder if it would be possible to modify my RSKs to both trigger off and make mana of other colored spells? if i do that i could pull inexorable tide and separate my mana growth from color to color
edit: sorry action is xy, layer is x^y and stage would be x^x .... i think ...
Hmm, I don't know what you mean by y(x^x) and (x^x)^x, it doesn't look right - (x^x)^x is just Layer 1, since Layer 2 is already x^x^x^...^x with x exponents.
I see what you mean by Harness the Storm. Putting a second copy in is no big deal anyway.
I guess you could use Sleight of Mind or one of the variants to change the color that triggers RSK, but that winds up allowing us to get red mana off of any spell, just like Inexorable Tide. I don't think there is any spell that changes mana symbols; There are some cards that allow for color changing, like Farrelite Priest.
ok, sorry still wrapping my head around the type of growth we are talking about. so each layer is exponentially more explosive in terms of growth. stages are't more powerful per say(they are just groups of layers) it's just they are hyper efficient in terms of cost->output ...
Each layer is more explosive in terms of growth, but calling it "exponentially more" is really understating it. The layers look like this:
Layer 1 is exponentiation: e.g. taking x to x^x.
Layer 2 is repeating Layer 1 x times, each time feeding the new number back into the Layer 1 function. So we get about x^x^x^...^x, where there are x exponents in the exponential tower. Note that this is x^(x^(x^(...^(x^x)...))), not (...(((x^x)^x)^x)...); the former is MUCH larger than the latter.
Layer 3 is repeating Layer 2 x times. So we get
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
...
repeat x times
...
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is x.
So we can no longer even simply describe Layer 3 as a tower of exponents, we need to keep applying the procedure to describe the final number.
Layer 4 is Layer 3 repeated x times, so we get
N(0) = the number we get when we stick in x into the Layer 3 procedure described above
N(1) = the number we get when we stick in N(0) into the Layer 3 procedure described above
...
N(x) = the number we get when we stick in N(x-1) into the Layer 3 procedure described above
So we cannot easily describe a Layer 4 number in terms of the Layer 3 function, we need to iterate it x times to describe it.
And the pattern continues for higher and higher layers. The Knuth arrow notation is defined the same way, so Layer X gives you a function with X Knuth arrows, e.g. Layer 5 takes X to X^^^^^X.
That's the reason that we didn't just use regular math operations to define our numbers, our numbers are much to big to be described with normal notation, even exponentiation. So we had to use Knuth arrow notation to get a handle on these numbers.
As for stages... no, stages really are much more powerful than any number of layers, it's not just more efficient. Sure, if we just apply the stage procedure once with, say, 10 Metallurgeons, we're going to get 22 layers. So if we finish there and call it a day, that's a 22-layer deck. But, what if we repeat the stage procedure?
For example, iet's say we start with 10 untapped Metallurgeons, resolve the stage procedure, then cast Battle Cry, and copy it 8 times. Applying the procedure will get us roughly 10^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^10 Psychic Battles. Let's switch to Conway notation: we use a -> b -> c to represnt a^^^...^^^b with c arrows. So the previous number is 10 -> 10 -> 22. We have that many Psychic Battles, and also about that many tapped Metallurgeons, since we are creating and tapping new Metallurgeons throughout our whole process. So, the first copy of Battle Cry gets us 10 -> 10 -> 22 untapped Metallurgeons, and now we can reapply the procedure to create 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22) tapped Metallurgeons. Now that is an enormous number - the number itself has so many arrows, that we need to use 22 arrows to describe the number of arrows it has! There is simply no way any layer deck can get that many arrows. Our current record for a layer deck is 417 arrows for 60 card Vintage deck. For a 100 card Commander deck we are in the mid 600s. So we're never going to get to a million layers or a googolplex layers, much less 10 -> 10 -> 22 layers! And that's with just one copy of Battle Cry. The second copy takes us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22)). Now this is a number so large, that the number of arrows required to describe it is itself a number so large that the number of arrows required to describe it is itself a number so large that it requires 22 arrows to describe it! Then the third copy of Battle Cry takes us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22))), and so on. We get an additional nesting of arrows for each copy of Battle Cry. With 63 copies of Battle Cry, we'll beat Graham's number!
And that's just 1 stage + 1 layer. Basically 1 stage + 1 layer with input X gets you the number
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
...
repeat X times
...
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is X.
So if we go to 1 stage plus 2 layers, that represents the procedure we get by repeating the above procedure X times, where each time we set X to the new bigger number we obtained in the previous procedure. Then 1 stage + 3 layers is 1 stage + 2 layers repeated X times, etc.
Then we get to 2 stages, which turns X into 1 stage + X layers. Again, that doesn't seem like a big advance, but you realize that it is once you get to 2 stages + 1 layer. 2 stages + 1 layer repeats the 2 stage procedure X times, that is, we repeatedly apply the procedure 1 stage + X layers, each time feeding the new incredibly large number we get into X. So 2 stages + 1 layer will be bigger than any deck we can create with 1 stage + any number of layers. Then we go to 3 stages, 4 stages, etc.
Getting back to the Standard deck, I think I found a way to get another layer.
So we'll have a draw card like Precognitive Perception. Then, we can draw Precognitive Perception with Costly Plunder. Now, at first this looks like an infinite because we can draw Costly Plunder with Precognitive Perception. But casting Costly Plunder makes us sacrifice a creature, so we just need to limit the number of creatures that we can get.
Next up the chain, we can have Elenda, the Dusk Rose. We can pump up Elenda's power by repeatedly casting Titanic Growth, and then we get many tokens when we sacrifice her, getting lots of tokens to sacrifice, allowing us to cast Costly Plunder many times. With Arcane Adaptation and Cherished Hatchling, we can give Elenda flash, allowing us to cast Emergency Powers to draw and cast Elenda many times. our chain looks like:
Titanic Growth -> Precognitive Perception -> Costly Plunder -> Elenda, the Dusk Rose -> Emergency Powers
which should take us to more than 2^^^^19 final damage.
Ok pretty sure this is something. Not sure exactly what but it sure feels stronger than just a few layers. I do apologize that I’m sending this from my phone, so the cards won’t be formatted etc etc.
1 black lotus
2 show and tell
3 omniscience
4 yawgmoth’s bargain
5 opalesence
6 mycosynth lattice
7 dual nature -
Pay 1 life(19), draw and play
8 doubling season
Pay 1 life(18) draw and play
9 runaway steam-kin
Pay 1 life(17) draw and play
10 thousand-year storm - RSK now has counters, never drop below 1 counter
Pay 1 life(16) draw and play
11 inexorable tide - we now have RSK engine online
Pay 1 life(15) draw and play
12 vitu-ghazi guildmage - we now have our populate engine up and running. We will be updating DS/RSK on every cast.
Pay 1 life(14) draw and play
13 vedelkan orrery - we now have flash
Pay 1 life(13) draw and play
14 karn, silver golem - we can now animate non creatures. Will need this is a minute
Pay 1 life(12) draw and play
15 hammer of nazahn - just let enter. Can animate but don’t need to
Pay 1 life(11) draw and play
16 illusionist’s bracers - so we do animate this.
Pay 1 life(10) draw and play
17a cackling counterpart - so we target our animate bracers with the original and DS with the TYS copy (which will resolve first). We get a lot of bracers here. All of them we will equip to yawgmoth’s bargain ....
Pay 1 life(9) and put a zillion draws on the stack. We let the first copy draw resolve (draws = N-1 where N is the amount of draws we got from paying the 1 life to drop to 9 life), we draw and play
18 precursor golem - yup. It’s important to note at this point with all our YB draws on the stack we don’t need to worry about making more draws, we will actually deck ourselves if we don’t figure out how to fix this(hint: we can), so we will concentrate our bracers making action on just super powering our populate ability along side just pumping out crazy amounts of DS along the way.
Let another draw resolve(d=N-2) and draw
19 arcane adaptation - so now we can spread all our spells around to the team via precursor golem. Ok so now we do a few things. We are about to recast CC from our graveyard but we want to make sure it updates everything we want it to. The big ones are: RSK, TYS, PG, IT, and of course DS. So we make sure we do our last few populate waves making a bunch of these heavy hitters. We could do one of our bracers and then use Karn to animate them to get hit by CC off the spreads but it feels like a waste when I can just make DS amounts off of just 4 mana. I might be incorrect here but I think we just leave the 1 copy of bracers being animated. We make sure to save at least 7 mana and then move into casting CC.
17b cackling counterpart(from graveyard) - so we get TYS amount of copies and PG amount of spreads along with all the counter making triggers of RSK. So just gonna short cut all of this and say we do our due diligence and use all these triggers/spells to their most beneficial ends.
Let next draw resolve(d=N-3), we draw and then play
20 riftsweeper - ok so this is when I started freaking out. So what this means is for the rest of our N-3 draws we can loop 2x casting of CC (1 from hand and 1 from yard). Well actually it means far more than that. While it is true that our N-3 draws will run out at some point, we still have 8 life we can sink into YB. As u can see we can wait until the last minute to activate YB so we can update the amount of bracers on our YB to reflect all the updates we will have done since we last used it. Luckily this just takes 4 mana. We do need to be able to populate a copy of riftsweeper as each of the draws resolve but again this just takes 4 mana which we certainly will have plenty of.
So, what is this? I’m converting X life into what feels like X+ layers(pretty sure CC/PG/AA is layer and my draw power updates per cast and even more so per full resolution of spending 1 life) but I’m not sure if it’s quite that good. As for the rest of the deck, well life gain seems to be a good start. I kept this trimmed way down to just have the important stuff but we can certainly add in more loops/layers hopefully gaining us even more life.
Unfortunately, you aren't getting X+ layers. It's actually not that many layers as it currently is, so far as I can tell, because the Cackling Counterpart, while it can update any of our permanents (but so can Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage already), it doesn't do anything with the actual resolving of a spell that Vitu-Ghazi doesn't do. So we get the main benefit from the casting of CC. So we have:
Layer 1: Each new token creation gets many more Doubling Seasons
Layer 2: Each activation of Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage gets many copies via Illusionist's Bracers
No we don’t activate 9 times all at once. We finish our N-3 draws update the IB on YB and then activate once. We wait until those draws are done and re-update the IB count on YB again and activate once. Repeat until we are out of life.
Each activation of YB will be fully powered up by everything that has happened in the entire series of draws/loops that happened just prior. While CC isn’t supper powerful we can have it resolve after we let it’s cast triggers get turned into DS. We can also do all of this with all the PG spread triggers waiting on the stack so when we start spreading CC it will doing so on a fully populated board state. So it’s like 1 extra wave of populate(tho likely not a fully IB powered one). It is 2x cast which is a nice bonus too.
Hmmm. It’s weird how the layers work for sure. Thinking about how CC resolves I’m definitely sure u are right about it not being a layer. It’s weird tho because we can add something like the harness loop inside of what I’m currently doing. This in my previous lists was 1-3 layers on its own and it should be doable inside this current list. I just need to add another CC, harness, willbender, and ixidron and now we have a pretty serviceable loop inside the upper layer of the deck. I can’t image that changes the math from 5 layers to 13(1 layer per 8 life), so I’m curious how that looks in the layer descriptions. I would think YB would still be my top layer .... but maybe I’m missing something here.
If you add the Harness the Storm combo, that would go in at Layer 5, and Yawgmoth's Bargain would go in at Layer 6. So you would deal about 2^^^^^^^12 damage.
Hello, long time reader first time posting here. Really appreciate all the work you guys have done on this.
I have put a little bit of thought into the standard deck, and I'm pretty sure we can complete whatever setup we need by turn 3 (and possibly go off that turn as well).
Simple stuff so far, we have used 4 of our starting 7 cards and are about to draw our 9th giving us 5 cards in hand at the start of turn 3. Note that the lands are pretty unrestricted at this point, just that they are untapped and the first one makes green. Probably at least one of them makes blue.
Turn 3:
The recently spoiled Giant Growth on Marwyn. Marwyn taps for GGGG which is spent on a kicked Gift of Growth on Marwyn.
Marwyn now taps for 8xG and our two lands are still untapped. And we still have 3 whole cards in hand.
Here I see are several options:
We could go immediately for Emergency Powers and have access to pretty much anything, but we probably don't want to exile one already.
We could play an island and cast Omniscience and then a card draw spell like Chemister's insight into Thousand-Year Storm and jump start to draw enough to start going off. However, free spells might be hard to avoid infinites with.
We even have enough nongreen mana for straight land Thousand Year Storm, and a card draw spell into more untaps of Marwyn and mana rocks to turn green into other colors. (Pirate's Prize?) This route is narrow, but even if it doesn't work for turn 3, it should definitely be enough to go off turn 4.
Apex of Power is another option to get us kicked off, and seems safer than Omniscience.
Another route is by Experimental Frenzy which looks interesting as a gating mechanism. If we are recycling our deck with Clear the Mind then each time a copy resolves we get a card stuck in our hand until we spend R to sacrifice frenzy, which we can draw from the next Clear the Mind, but there's no way to cast the Frenzy with stuff on the stack, so we'd either need to resolve the whole stack, or put it into play with say an Emergency Powers. It seems like there may be an interaction with Runaway Steam-Kin as it would take 3 castings of frenzy to make the RRR to sacrifice it 3 times. However, this would require there be no other way to pump RSK and the forerunner is red... (RSK would be dying to the forerunner triggers a lot too so maybe they can coexist without going infinite?)
Other observations:
With an Arcane Adaptation
In addition to Raff Capashen giving our artifacts and legends (and sagas...) flash, we can give all our creatures flash with Arcane Adaptation naming dino and a death of Cherished Hatchling (also gives us a lot of on cast fight triggers). Also, the new Teferi, Time Raveler gives flash to our sorceries.
I don't see a way to make tokens of enchantments, However we can make copies of artifacts by first making them creatures with Skilled Animator, then using Quasiduplicate. We can also make copies of lands, though that seems less useful.
We also have access to a sideboard if we need it with Mastermind's Acquisition and War's Karn though I don't think that is likely to be needed.
Emergency Powers will work, so we can go Ajani's Influence -> Precognitive Perception -> Emergency Powers for instance.
the solution i came up with is illusionist's bracers, masterwork of ingenuity and hammer of nazahn. i play hammer and let it enter with nothing special going on. i then play bracers and instantly equip it to my guildmage. i then play MoI and let it enter as itself, and then animate it using Karn, silver golem. then i can populate the masterwork for 4 mana and get original + bracers amount of that ability. as the masterwork tokens resolve i have them enter as bracers, and equip them instantly via hammer back to the guildmage. this lets be able to update the populate ability copies at instant speed whenever i want to for 4 mana. i do need to do this for each permanent i want to activate but its only 1 activation to bring new ones up to date because whatever the current amount is will make all previous generations basically non relevant because of how large the scaling will become.
also i came up with some kinda cool tricks we can do in the standard build as well. i'll post those later.
Also, why do you need Masterwork of Ingenuity? You can just as easily populate Illusionist's Bracers.
As far as the standard list goes I’m not sure this helps at all but we can give our opponents a copy of polyraptor. This is doable with a 3 card set up of playing captive audience, then rampage of the clans and then switcheroo. Once that is done we can damage our opponents polyraptor and get thier tokens by playing crafty cutpurse. With global damage effects it should give us quite a few extra copies. Depending on when we cast switcheroo compared to our thousand-year storm count we could give them many copies. As we loop the deck with emergency powers we could continue doing this for many iterations to give them many^many copies. Also a good way to be sure we can draw all the cards is playing something like niv-mizzet, parun or nezahal, primal tide and then cap the draws with underrealm lich so we don’t deck out. A good way to be able to play the entire deck in one go is play electrodominance for our highest cmc and let TYS copy it enough to play the entirety of the deck. Just a few ideas for now
The problem with cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parrun is that it will mess up our spell chain, since any card can then fetch any other. To avoid this, we would have to prevent cards going back into our library - but most of our chain aside from Emergency Powers gets cards from the library. It would be nice to find some sort of card drawer that was necessarily restricted in some way - perhaps depending on combat, or the opponent's library.
Electrodominance looks very good, we can preserve the other colors besides red.
Edit: Seafloor Oracle looks quite good. Get 3 or 4 of them out and attack, draw at least 9 or 16 cards.
Edit: Ooh, I found a way to extend the chain by one. Instead of Aegis of the Heavens, the base spell will be Yawgmoth's Vile Offering which will bring back Forerunner of the Empire, then a Dinosaur, to do another three rounds worth of damaging. Then we can bring back YVO using Board the Weatherlight, and then we can fetch Board the Weatherlight with Ajani's Influence. So that should bring us to 2^^^^19!
Edit: Pfft, I'm being an idiot. We don't have Vedalken Orrery! So any sorcery that we try to fetch will be fetched exactly once, then it's stuck in our hand. So we need everything but the last spell in the chain to be instant speed.
We can still get a chain of three: Aegis of the Heavens -> Sphinx's Insight -> Emergency Powers
That results in between 2^^21 and 2^^22 damage when all is said and done. Surely we can do better!
Edit: We can extend the chain by one again. This time the base spell is Spit Flame, which we can use to damage a Polyraptor, creating all of one token copy. But that's good enough to start with. Spit Flame can be brought back to our hand when a Dragon comes into the battlefield under our control. So, the next spell up will be Yawgmoth's Vile Offering which can bring a random Dragon back onto the battlefield. YVO is a sorcery, but we can give it flash with Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage. We can destroy our Dragon using a spare copy of Spit Flame, to be brought back again with YVO. YVO then leads into Sphinx's Insight, and then Emergency Powers, as before.
1 Black Lotus
2 Show and tell
3 Omniscience
4 enter the infinite - we draw our deck
5 Mycosynth lattice - enters nothing happens
6 Opalesence
7 mirrorworks - so this will be useful for getting some non creature tokens, and does add more value to non token creatures entering too
8 Dual nature -
8 Doubling season -
9 abyssal persecutor - we make a lot of these. we don't need many but we do need 1 to keep our opponent alive
10 Runaway steam-kin - with adding MW we start slightly faster to this point
11 pandemonium - one of our damage dealers, self triggers and importantly we get some counters on RSK. unless we will be doing it in preparation of casting a red spell we will always leave at least 1 counter on each RSK
12 inexorable tide - so now we have our RSK engine fully operational
13 Vitu-ghazi guildmage - and now we have the populate engine online as well
14 vedalken orrery - now we operate at instant speed
15 mirror gallery - cool so now we can have multiples of legendary stuff
16 karn, silver golem - so now we can turn anything into a creature that isn't already, which then allows us to populate those once we can get a token copy of them.
17 hammer of nazahn -
18 illusionist's bracers - here we have our replacement for our rowan kenrith layer
19 rings of brighthearth - so this is bit of a weird choice to have rings and bracers, but sometimes one of them isn't that good and the other is excellent. this way we have both and always have the one we want. we can split our copies of populate(or other abilities) and/or triggers in two groups, bracers and rings . in both cases we will use the all but the last few populates to just make more DS but will use one of each group to make more of that group (more rings or more bracers). we will do this in conjunction with making whatever else we need of want with this populate ability at the very very end of our mana supply.
20 precursor golem - yup
21 arcane adaptation - now we make everything golems and any targeted spell will scale to our current board state
22 thousand-year storm - now we have our spell multiplier
23 thopter engineer - we have haste, and an added body to boot
24 boon reflection - our life gain can now be super powered
25 cradle of vitality - so this lets us update our life gain between each trigger of it by using the counter making trigger and put them back onto our RSKs and use that to update both boon reflection and craddle on every life gain trigger.
26 goblin bombardment - we now have a sac outlet
27 firesong and sunspeaker(FS+SS) - so this makes our red damage spells better. this card allows me to get 2 separate loops out of 1 spell.
28 chandra's phoenix(CP) - we will play this out and then sac off all token copies first and then the original.
29 darksteel forge - our creatures are now indestructible
30 harness the storm -
31 willbender -
32 ixidron - now our harness loop is up and running
33,34 fiery confluence - so we will actually choose all 3 modes on each of the castings of this spell. this means because of how its worded(there is only 1 target) that golem will spread this spell. because of FS+SS it also has lifelink. so we get a ton of stuff going on here. we get a loop going with CP for a bit of damage and cast trigger and a bunch of life. we will resolve our first CP loop and then resolve our first life gain trigger. before we let the next stuff resolve though we will introduce another thing we can loop.
35 wydwen, the biting gale - so now we can see that for each life we gain we will be able to loop castings of WBG. this we can do for each instance of life gain and an amount of times equal to the amount of life we gained. so we cast WBG and get ready to loop some more. but we just cast a multicolored spell so lets loop off that too. as with CP we will be sac'ing of our extra token copies of WBG to bombardment to get some value out of them.
36 lobber crew - so right now this is where my loop ends. every time we cast WBG we untap our army of lobbers and hit for some damage. this is as far as i've gotten. i had another layer after this(well 2 actually) but i found an infinite so i'm back to this point. untapping crew has to be able to better than just 1 damage(or bracers/rings amount of damage). i'm still looking for options but i'm sure i can move past this.
37+ so i actually have another loop sort of figured out. it means me moving away from my twister loops. i'm gonna be using rift sweeper to get back surreal memoir. in the current list i don't have a single instant though, so it doesn't do me much good atm. at first i was using an instant to gain me life but FC w/ FS+SS is pretty bonkers so i decided to use that as my life gain option. i haven't found a suitable card yet but i'm sure i can find something. i could also branch off and start a chain off of the casting of a red creature via the CP loop. that's also an option i need to look into. the way i was going to limit rift sweeper and memoir was to have a draw engine that scales to my team. this draw cannot be creature based and cannot be an instant as it would go infinite w/ sweeper and memoir, it also cannot gain me life. i did find press for answers for a good draw engine as it scales off my team size and then scales off DS through the clue tokens. also this way it is a bit easier to stack my loops inside of each other because i can control when the next draw will happen(sort of). the clues are fine atm because i cannot populate them as if i make them a creature they die to state based checks before i can try to copy them. i do have to be careful about my buffs though to ensure this stays true. i could look at using combat as neheb, the eternal scales on total life loss per post combat main phases and that would be my first instance of scaling off of my damage output, so it is an interesting possibility.
edit: i forgot to mention that i was going to include 2 copies of quasiduplicate to help support the memoir/sweeper loop by letting me jumpstart one of the quasiduplicates to get a copy of memoir in my yard where we can abuse it with our harness loop. i figured 2 copies would be nice to take advantage of the harness end of things. it's also a sorcery so it doesn't interfere with memoir end of things.
I'm just going to mention one thing before I analyze the deck further. I just realized that Inexorable Tide just causes spells cast to be at Layer 3, not Layer 4. This is because Inexorable Tide puts counters on all Runaway Steam-Kins at the same time. This means they get affected by exactly the same number of Doubling Seasons, so if you have R Runaway Steam-Kins and D Doubling Seasons, Inexorable Tide resolves as a single step that adds R * 2^D counters in total to your RSKs. This is what we call a "multiplicative effect", and, while that sounds like it is good, what it means is that the layers do not stack; having lots of Doubling Seasons with one RSK would count for a layer, and having lots of RSKs with no Doubling Seasons would count for a layer, but having them both is still just a single layer, it just means that the number to the right of the arrows is bigger, but that advantage will disappear as you go up in layers, as I've tried to show in my previous analyses. So Inexorable Tide is at layer 3.
Contrast that with what happens when you cast a red spell; then, every Runaway Steam-Kin will trigger, and rather than all resolve at once, all those triggered abilities go on the stack to be resolved one at a time. So, you resolve one RSK trigger, and get a whole bunch of counters because of your number of Doubling Seasons. You can then start removing the counters to get red mana and populate, increasing the Doubling Seasons by a lot (at the Layer 2 level). Then, when you resolve the next RSK trigger, there will be a whole bunch more counters created because there are so many more Doubling Seasons in play now. So that is exactly what it means for layers to stack.
So in short, it would be better to go back to Painter's Servant, provided that that does not cause an infinite; if it does, then we will need red spells to get to Layer 4.
And, just as I'm typing this, I realize that you can have a whole bunch of Inexorable Tides, and they will all resolve one at a time. So I'm being silly again. Well, I'll leave it because the above explains why Inexorable Tide is still at Layer 4 and not Layer 5, even though we can add counters to all RSKs at once and not just one.
as good as forerunner is, it might be even better to just take them out and make our polyraptors indestructible and just point a bunch of damage at them. we also get numerous clones and a few token copy makers as well so we have plenty of ways to get a bunch of them to start off.
yeah i knew tide likely wouldn't be a full layer but i was curious whether i would want more RSK or more tides. not sure it matters as the are kinda dependent on each other to work at all. it was just to open up being able to look at color limited things but i haven't even gotten that far yet lol
Layer 1: Creating a token copy of Doubling Season
Layer 2: Activating Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, and copying it for each Illusionist's Bracers
Layer 3: Resolving a Cradle of Vitality trigger puts many counters on a Runaway-Steam Kin thanks to Boon Reflection and Doubling Season
Layer 4: Gaining life triggers many Cradles of Vitality
Layer 5: I think (?) resolving a single Fiery Confluence will create many lifegain triggers because of all the creatures on the battlefield
Layers 6-7: Casting Fiery Confluence gets two layers worth of copies thanks to Precursor Golem
Layer 8: Casting from you hand gets many castings from your graveyard thanks to the Harness the Storm combo
As you can see, the Wydwen / Lobber Crew combo does not add any layers here. Since Lobber Crew just deals damage, it doesn't connect to any of the lower layers, so Wydwen / Lobber Crew are part of their own separate chain that don't lengthen the main chain.
The Press for Answers / Surreal Memoir combo is nice... if we added an instant that adds life (say Abuna's Chant) we would have:
Layers 5-6: Casting Abuna's Chant gets many copies thanks to Precursor Golem
Layer 7: Casting Abuna's Chant from your hand gets many castings from the graveyard
Layer 8: Casting Surreal Memoir gets many copies
Layer 9: Casting Surreal Memoir from your hand gets many castings from the graveyard
Layer 10: Resolving a Press for Anwers gets many Clue tokens
Layers 11-12: Casting Press for Answers gets many copies
Layer 13: Casting Press for Answers from your hand gets many castings from your graveyard
So you're up to layer 13! Not bad at all.
And yeah, you definitely want more Inexorable Tides, since they resolve one at a time, whereas Runaway Steam-Kins will be populated all at once. (They get counters one at a time from red spells, but Inexorable Tides is a teeny bit better even then because you get counters on all RSKs for each resolution rather than just one.)
on cast we stack all of our counter making triggers. we let 1 resolve and use those to populate more DS. then the next resolves, amplified by more DS and we repeat. on top of this once illusionist's bracers comes online we will be using bracers to amplify the populate ability itself. so we use all but 1 populate to make populate better on each activation of populate and then the last to make DS before we activate populate again. this way we continuously update our populate ability as well as our DS count to. and this is true on any counter adding event. we can update our DS yes, but we can update our DS making capability as well. previously it was just casting spells but now we can do it with life gain triggers too. i'm not sure cradle of vitality is actually a layer but if its not its still pretty good.
edit: sorry on updating populate it should be DS->populate update->last one on DS ..... i think
edit: well if we include riftsweeper in the final 13 layer deck we can convert each clue into rings number of cards draws each of which will be memoir which lets us repeat the life gaining chain. its limited because i can't convert life->clues. also even if we can't connect WBG to the lobber crew stuff just yet, she still gets us multiple casting/RSK layers during each of our life gain events. this is what we gained the life for after all. this should be a layer to herself ... i think if i understand the layers ... or are WBG and cradle kind of competing for the same life gain layer?
edit: we need to include at least 1 way to gt memoir into our yard. quasiduplicate was going to be my choice as it gets a nice spread from PG and can't get picked up by memoir. we only need 1 but we could do 2 to loop it with harness, then jump start one of them to get memoir from hand into yard where we can cast it(via harness) without exiling itself to allow it to be looped via harness many times.
Yeah, Stakfish's deck that exceeded Graham's number went off on turn 6. I think in current Standard we should be able to go off on turn 4, even if we go first. Something like the following:
Turn 1:
Play a Stomping Ground and pay the 2 life. Tap to cast a Llanowar Elf.
Turn 2:
Play a Rootbound Crag, tap both lands and the elf to play three more Llanowar Elves.
Tunr 3:
Play Electrodominance with X = 4. Play Sphinx's Insight, and draw two more cards. Play Kumena, Tyrant of Orozca, along with two Seafloor Oracles. Tap all three Merfolk to draw another Seafloor Oracle and play it.
Turn 4:
Draw a card, then attack with all four Merfolk, and draw 12 more cards. With 13 cards in our hand, I don't forsee any further problems; we can first play an Electrodominance for 4. We can play three Runaway Steam-Kins, and then three red spells of any kind, to generate 9 mana; this will allow us to play another Electrodominance for X = 7, which is the most we will need. If we need more cards, we can play Garna, the Bloodflame and Response // Resurgence (these can be two of the red spells that we played) and attack with say another 3 Seafloor Oracles (using Quasiduplicates, perhaps) to draw another 18 cards, then tap them to draw one more. So finishing by turn 4 should be no problem, unless we're really hurting for deck space (which is certainly not the case now!).
I'm pretty happy with turn 4; of course our damage is no where near the Graham's number deck, but I doubt we will be able to replicate that. Maybe a few more layers will be good enough.
Edit: Just saw your last couple of edits. So yeah, I got fixated on the life gain chain and forgot that Wydwen, the Biting Gale would trigger the Inexorable Tides. So we have the casting of a spell at Layer 4, then a resolution of an Abuna's Chant (or whatever life-gaining instant you want to use) will be Layer 5 thanks to Boon Reflection. Then the casting of Abuna's Chant gets layers 6-8 and Surreal Memoir gets layers 9-10. Then I guess I forgot about being able to use Rings of Brighthearth on the clue tokens, so that gets layer 11, and then Press for Freedom gets layers 12-15.
I'm confused by your last edit: Why do we want to get Surreal Memoir into our yard, I thought we wanted to draw it with Clue tokens, and how would Quasiduplicate fix that?
we want memoir in yard to be able to loop them via harness. this means each riftsweeper and clue draw doesn't get us 1 or 2 casts of memoir it gets us harness amounts of casts. quasiduplicate was so we can get memoir in the yard to begin with(via discard to jumpstart). we need a way to discard it because w/ rebound it will self exile and not be loopable with harness if we just cast the 2nd copy from hand. it requires an extra step to set up but this keeps it from going infinite but still allows for harness loops with a card that normally self exiles. this works because rebound doesn't trigger the self exile if it isn't cast from hand. we can still get 1 copy from exile into the deck and draw it again off our clue draws, which is all we need to get the harness loop going. we just need to set this up once as after that we will be retrieving just 1 copy to start a harness loop when we do cast it.
i'll look at what that standard list start can do for us. still on looking through the cards to see what we can abuse
std edit: electrodominance isn't quite _that_ good. we don't get all spells X or less, just 1 per copy of ED. it only get's really explosive in conjunction with thousand-year storm. i like the card draw engine tho, that'll come in quite handy i'm sure. probably will be turn 5 or 6 with all turns before that just used as set up. i was looking for a way to turn TYS into a creature but couldn't find a way. we can make artifacts into creatures with skilled animator but not sure that will help us as much
advice edit: yeah i am aware the ease of set up with my deck will likely be a limiting factor. i have kept it possible to include lands in this version. that opens up playing things like tolarian academy, serra's sanctum, and gaea's cradle. having access to these lets me potentially eliminate lattice at some point and still be able to pay for most if not all my abilities. at that point i could make 4/5 of wburg so getting into some segregating might be possible. i guess as a bit of nod to that fact, exactly what needs to be accomplished to get to stage level scaling? i know i've kinda wrapped my head around the layers but i'm pretty sure i'm a long way from the multiple stage decks you guys are working on. just curious what needs to happen to get from multi layer decks to actually dealing in true stages?
Heh, goes to show that I'm narrowly thinking about this challenge and not about whether a card is reasonably powered; obviously Electrodominance would be too good the way I was thinking. I'll try to cook up a turn 6 or turn 7 start.
A stage is process that can take X of a resource and turn it into X layers; for a long time, this was just a pipe dream. I actually stumbled upon the first such combo quite by accident. There are basically just two ways to make a stage process that we know of. One is the Bloodbond March / Psychic Battle combo that I found; tstorm then found a variant where Bloodbond March is replaced by Possibility Storm. The other is the complicated combo created by Stakfish in his Graham's number-beating Standard deck. It really is rather intricate, and the details can be found at his website. The Bloodbond March version is simpler, and appears to be more conducive to creating many stages. The post where I first described it is here. I guess I can try to make a more updated description now.
So, like I said, the key parts are Bloodbond March and Psychic Battle. (Psychic Battle can be replaced or augmented by Grip of Chaos, and in some cases by Rings of Brighthearth.) We have X of some resource that we are going to turn into 2X layers; the resource can be either mana of some color, or some type of creature token. (Credit goes to Iijil for discovering how to use tokens as the resource rather than mana) For this example, let's use Metallurgeon tokens, which are what is used as the primary stage in our megastage and gigastage decks.
So we have X hasted Metallurgeon tokens, and at least X white mana. We also have the
Opalescence
Psychic Battle
Cowardice
Horobi, Death's Wail
Bloodbond March
Cephalid Shrine
Mimic Vat
Omniscience
Vedalken Orrery
Mirror of Fate
March of the Machines
Perpetual Timepiece
Dual Nature
Copy Enchantment
Allay
Azorius Keyrune
Metallurgeon
cards on the battlefield, and we have managed to create a bunch of token copies of all our stuff, in particular multiple copies of Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March.
So, we first cast our nontoken Metallurgeon from our hand. This triggers all the Bloodbond Marches. They go on top of the Metallurgeon spell though, so put the Cephalid Shrine trigger on top of the Bloodbond March triggers, and use it to counter the Metallurgeon spell, sending it to the graveyard. We now use the topmost Bloodbond March trigger to bring the Metallurgeon to the battlefield. So now we have Metallurgeon on the battlefield, and a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack.
Next, before we resolve any of the remaining Bloodbond March triggers, we tap a Metallurgeon token, targeting the nontoken Metallurgeon. This activates multiple copies of Psychic Battle, Cowardice, and Horobi, Death's Wail triggers.
Now, when we have both Cowardice and Horobi, Death's Wail in play, any time we target anything both will trigger. Since the triggers come into existence simultaneously, we can order them on the stack however we so choose. The one that we put on the top is the one that will be executed; since the target of the ability becomes a new permanent when it changes zones, all of the other abilities will fizzle. What this means is, whenever we target any creature, we have the option of either bouncing it back to our hand, or destroying it and sending it to the graveyard, our choice. (If we want the original ability to take effect, we need to remove both Cowardice and Horobi, by the way.)
So, we will put a Cowardice trigger on top, and bounce the nontoken Metallurgeon back to our hand. On the stack is a bunch of Bloodmarch triggers on the bottom, and a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers above those (intermixed with a bunch of Cowardice and Horobi triggers that don't matter anymore, so we will ignore them).
Now, we repeat the process: We replay the Metallurgeon and counter it, getting a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers above our previous bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Then we tap a second Metallurgeon token to bounce the Metallurgeon back to our hand, and create a second bunch of Psychic Battle triggers above the second bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. We continue this process until we run out of tokens to activate.
After all is said and done, the stack looks like this:
(first to resolve)
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
... (repeat X times)
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
(last to resolve)
and we have the nontoken Metallurgeon on the battlefield. So now the stage is set up, and it's time to start resolving it.
The first thing we resolve is the top group of Psychic Battle triggers. For all but one of those triggers, we will use them to bounce other animated artifacts, in order to make more enchantments and other stuff. If we bounce Azorious Keyrune, we can replay it, and it gets Dual Nature triggers. We can spend three mana to cast Allay with buyback, and that allows us to bounce many enchantments thanks to all the Psychic Battles in play. We use one to bounce March of the Machines, and the rest can bounce Copy Enchantment to keep replaying, doubling the number of Dual Natures each time. And with March of the Machines gone, we can tap all of our Keyrunes to get a bunch of mana, which can be used to cast Allay with buyback many times. So we get a couple of layers already, but this doesn't mean too much; it just means our stage is worth 2X+2 layers or so rather than 2X, which is no longer a big deal at this level. Of course, with our last playing of Copy Enchantment we will copy Psychic Battle.
We have saved one Psychic Battle trigger from our Metallurgeon token, and that is to target Metallurgeon, except instead of putting Cowardice on top of the stack and bouncing the Metallurgeon, we will put the Horobi trigger on top of the stack and send it to the graveyard. This triggers our Mimic Vats; we will imprint the Metallurgeon on one, and tap it to create a hasted Metallurgeon token. After than, we can use Mirror of Fate to put it into our library, and use Perpetual Timepiece to put it into our graveyard. But that's as far as we can get with it; it's stuck in our graveyard until we can get to a Bloodbond March trigger. For this reason, each stack of Psychic Battle triggers can only create one token copy of Metallurgeon, because we need to resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to get it back. This is important, since otherwise we could keep increasing our number of tokens and going infinite.
So, next we resolve the topmost Bloodbond March trigger of the top BM group, and bring it back to the battlefield. We can now tap our newly created Metallurgeon token, and we get Psychic Battle triggers, but now we get way more Psychic Battle triggers than before, because we created many more Psychic Battles while resolving the previous group of Psychic Battles. So our stack differs from before in that our top PB group has way more triggers than before, and our top BM group has decreased by one.
We do the same thing again; each time, the top PM group increases enormously, and the top BM group decreases by one. Eventually, the second BM group will run out. At this point, we do _not_ activate our lone Metallurgeon token! That would create another PB group above the second PB group, with no BM group in between. So our number of groups will have decreased by two, which will cause our whole combo to fizzle out faster than it should. Instead, we save our Metallurgeon token, and resolve the topmost PB trigger from the second PB group, to bounce the Metallurgeon. Then we replay the Metallurgeon, and get many more Bloodbond March triggers than we had before (since we remembered to create more Bloodbond Marches just before this step). Then we use the top BM trigger to bring the Metallurgeon back to the battlefield, and now we tap our token to create more PB triggers.
So now our stack is different in that the first PB group and the first BM group are way bigger than before, but the second PB group has decreased by one.
You can see how this continues. We will keep resolving our top PB group and top BM group, and after they are fully resolved we lose a trigger from the second PB group. When that second PB group is fully resolved, we dip into the second BM group to create a much larger second PB group, and so on down the line.
Eventually, we will completely run out of all of our triggers. We will still have hasted Metallurgeons, since as we resolve down the stacks we build our token reserve back up, but now our Metallurgeon is on the battlefield. So we can build our stack back up, but this time the bottom Bloodbond March group is gone, so we have a stack of 2X-1 groups rather than 2X. Then, after the 2X-1 stack is fully resolved, we can build up a 2X-2 group, and so on, until finally the stack is cleared, and all our untapped hasted Metallurgeons are gone - but we have Ackermann many Psychic Battles and Bloodbond Marches!
Just to count - each time we resolve a Psychic Battle trigger from the top group, we take the number of Psychic Battles from X to about 2^^X. We can resolve X of these before having to dip into the second group, so that takes X to 2^^^X for the whole top PB group. This uses up just one BM trigger from the top BM group, so the whole top BM group takes X to 2^^^^X. Then the second PB group takes X to 2^^^^^X, and so on, until the bottom group is at Layer 2X+2.
So that's it, that's how my version of the stage works. Once you have absorbed this, I can try to help you with hyperstages and beyond. Stakfish has a great summary of the state of things in a post from not too long ago.
fwiw i can't make harness the storm work off one spell. i need at least one target in yard as i cast from hand(same with runic repetition as i need a legal target to cast it in the first place). if there is no spell in yard then harness won't trigger at all, so countering it won't work(how you want anyway, might be able to add layers with counters tho). it relies on having targets where stuff like bloodbond march and surreal memoir don't, they just get put onto the stack. they can't really fizzle, they can just accomplish nothing if we can't put something there for them to get back.
edit: i wonder if it would be possible to modify my RSKs to both trigger off and make mana of other colored spells? if i do that i could pull inexorable tide and separate my mana growth from color to color
edit: sorry action is xy, layer is x^y and stage would be x^x .... i think ...
I see what you mean by Harness the Storm. Putting a second copy in is no big deal anyway.
I guess you could use Sleight of Mind or one of the variants to change the color that triggers RSK, but that winds up allowing us to get red mana off of any spell, just like Inexorable Tide. I don't think there is any spell that changes mana symbols; There are some cards that allow for color changing, like Farrelite Priest.
Layer 1 is exponentiation: e.g. taking x to x^x.
Layer 2 is repeating Layer 1 x times, each time feeding the new number back into the Layer 1 function. So we get about x^x^x^...^x, where there are x exponents in the exponential tower. Note that this is x^(x^(x^(...^(x^x)...))), not (...(((x^x)^x)^x)...); the former is MUCH larger than the latter.
Layer 3 is repeating Layer 2 x times. So we get
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is
...
repeat x times
...
x^x^x^...^x, where the number of exponents in the tower is x.
So we can no longer even simply describe Layer 3 as a tower of exponents, we need to keep applying the procedure to describe the final number.
Layer 4 is Layer 3 repeated x times, so we get
N(0) = the number we get when we stick in x into the Layer 3 procedure described above
N(1) = the number we get when we stick in N(0) into the Layer 3 procedure described above
...
N(x) = the number we get when we stick in N(x-1) into the Layer 3 procedure described above
So we cannot easily describe a Layer 4 number in terms of the Layer 3 function, we need to iterate it x times to describe it.
And the pattern continues for higher and higher layers. The Knuth arrow notation is defined the same way, so Layer X gives you a function with X Knuth arrows, e.g. Layer 5 takes X to X^^^^^X.
That's the reason that we didn't just use regular math operations to define our numbers, our numbers are much to big to be described with normal notation, even exponentiation. So we had to use Knuth arrow notation to get a handle on these numbers.
As for stages... no, stages really are much more powerful than any number of layers, it's not just more efficient. Sure, if we just apply the stage procedure once with, say, 10 Metallurgeons, we're going to get 22 layers. So if we finish there and call it a day, that's a 22-layer deck. But, what if we repeat the stage procedure?
For example, iet's say we start with 10 untapped Metallurgeons, resolve the stage procedure, then cast Battle Cry, and copy it 8 times. Applying the procedure will get us roughly 10^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^10 Psychic Battles. Let's switch to Conway notation: we use a -> b -> c to represnt a^^^...^^^b with c arrows. So the previous number is 10 -> 10 -> 22. We have that many Psychic Battles, and also about that many tapped Metallurgeons, since we are creating and tapping new Metallurgeons throughout our whole process. So, the first copy of Battle Cry gets us 10 -> 10 -> 22 untapped Metallurgeons, and now we can reapply the procedure to create 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22) tapped Metallurgeons. Now that is an enormous number - the number itself has so many arrows, that we need to use 22 arrows to describe the number of arrows it has! There is simply no way any layer deck can get that many arrows. Our current record for a layer deck is 417 arrows for 60 card Vintage deck. For a 100 card Commander deck we are in the mid 600s. So we're never going to get to a million layers or a googolplex layers, much less 10 -> 10 -> 22 layers! And that's with just one copy of Battle Cry. The second copy takes us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22)). Now this is a number so large, that the number of arrows required to describe it is itself a number so large that the number of arrows required to describe it is itself a number so large that it requires 22 arrows to describe it! Then the third copy of Battle Cry takes us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 22))), and so on. We get an additional nesting of arrows for each copy of Battle Cry. With 63 copies of Battle Cry, we'll beat Graham's number!
And that's just 1 stage + 1 layer. Basically 1 stage + 1 layer with input X gets you the number
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is
...
repeat X times
...
X^^^...^^^X, where the number of arrows is X.
So if we go to 1 stage plus 2 layers, that represents the procedure we get by repeating the above procedure X times, where each time we set X to the new bigger number we obtained in the previous procedure. Then 1 stage + 3 layers is 1 stage + 2 layers repeated X times, etc.
Then we get to 2 stages, which turns X into 1 stage + X layers. Again, that doesn't seem like a big advance, but you realize that it is once you get to 2 stages + 1 layer. 2 stages + 1 layer repeats the 2 stage procedure X times, that is, we repeatedly apply the procedure 1 stage + X layers, each time feeding the new incredibly large number we get into X. So 2 stages + 1 layer will be bigger than any deck we can create with 1 stage + any number of layers. Then we go to 3 stages, 4 stages, etc.
So we'll have a draw card like Precognitive Perception. Then, we can draw Precognitive Perception with Costly Plunder. Now, at first this looks like an infinite because we can draw Costly Plunder with Precognitive Perception. But casting Costly Plunder makes us sacrifice a creature, so we just need to limit the number of creatures that we can get.
Next up the chain, we can have Elenda, the Dusk Rose. We can pump up Elenda's power by repeatedly casting Titanic Growth, and then we get many tokens when we sacrifice her, getting lots of tokens to sacrifice, allowing us to cast Costly Plunder many times. With Arcane Adaptation and Cherished Hatchling, we can give Elenda flash, allowing us to cast Emergency Powers to draw and cast Elenda many times. our chain looks like:
Titanic Growth -> Precognitive Perception -> Costly Plunder -> Elenda, the Dusk Rose -> Emergency Powers
which should take us to more than 2^^^^19 final damage.
1 black lotus
2 show and tell
3 omniscience
4 yawgmoth’s bargain
5 opalesence
6 mycosynth lattice
7 dual nature -
Pay 1 life(19), draw and play
8 doubling season
Pay 1 life(18) draw and play
9 runaway steam-kin
Pay 1 life(17) draw and play
10 thousand-year storm - RSK now has counters, never drop below 1 counter
Pay 1 life(16) draw and play
11 inexorable tide - we now have RSK engine online
Pay 1 life(15) draw and play
12 vitu-ghazi guildmage - we now have our populate engine up and running. We will be updating DS/RSK on every cast.
Pay 1 life(14) draw and play
13 vedelkan orrery - we now have flash
Pay 1 life(13) draw and play
14 karn, silver golem - we can now animate non creatures. Will need this is a minute
Pay 1 life(12) draw and play
15 hammer of nazahn - just let enter. Can animate but don’t need to
Pay 1 life(11) draw and play
16 illusionist’s bracers - so we do animate this.
Pay 1 life(10) draw and play
17a cackling counterpart - so we target our animate bracers with the original and DS with the TYS copy (which will resolve first). We get a lot of bracers here. All of them we will equip to yawgmoth’s bargain ....
Pay 1 life(9) and put a zillion draws on the stack. We let the first copy draw resolve (draws = N-1 where N is the amount of draws we got from paying the 1 life to drop to 9 life), we draw and play
18 precursor golem - yup. It’s important to note at this point with all our YB draws on the stack we don’t need to worry about making more draws, we will actually deck ourselves if we don’t figure out how to fix this(hint: we can), so we will concentrate our bracers making action on just super powering our populate ability along side just pumping out crazy amounts of DS along the way.
Let another draw resolve(d=N-2) and draw
19 arcane adaptation - so now we can spread all our spells around to the team via precursor golem. Ok so now we do a few things. We are about to recast CC from our graveyard but we want to make sure it updates everything we want it to. The big ones are: RSK, TYS, PG, IT, and of course DS. So we make sure we do our last few populate waves making a bunch of these heavy hitters. We could do one of our bracers and then use Karn to animate them to get hit by CC off the spreads but it feels like a waste when I can just make DS amounts off of just 4 mana. I might be incorrect here but I think we just leave the 1 copy of bracers being animated. We make sure to save at least 7 mana and then move into casting CC.
17b cackling counterpart(from graveyard) - so we get TYS amount of copies and PG amount of spreads along with all the counter making triggers of RSK. So just gonna short cut all of this and say we do our due diligence and use all these triggers/spells to their most beneficial ends.
Let next draw resolve(d=N-3), we draw and then play
20 riftsweeper - ok so this is when I started freaking out. So what this means is for the rest of our N-3 draws we can loop 2x casting of CC (1 from hand and 1 from yard). Well actually it means far more than that. While it is true that our N-3 draws will run out at some point, we still have 8 life we can sink into YB. As u can see we can wait until the last minute to activate YB so we can update the amount of bracers on our YB to reflect all the updates we will have done since we last used it. Luckily this just takes 4 mana. We do need to be able to populate a copy of riftsweeper as each of the draws resolve but again this just takes 4 mana which we certainly will have plenty of.
So, what is this? I’m converting X life into what feels like X+ layers(pretty sure CC/PG/AA is layer and my draw power updates per cast and even more so per full resolution of spending 1 life) but I’m not sure if it’s quite that good. As for the rest of the deck, well life gain seems to be a good start. I kept this trimmed way down to just have the important stuff but we can certainly add in more loops/layers hopefully gaining us even more life.
Layer 1: Each new token creation gets many more Doubling Seasons
Layer 2: Each activation of Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage gets many copies via Illusionist's Bracers
Layer 3: Each Inexorable Tide trigger adds many counters to Runaway Steam-Kin due to Doubling Seasons
Layer 4: Each time you cast Cackling Counterpart, you trigger many Inexorable Tides
Layer 5: Each time you spend a life using Yawgmoth's Bargain, you get many copies via Illusionist's Bracers
So since we activate YB 9 times once we have zillions of IBs on it, we get roughly 2^^^^^^12 damage.
Each activation of YB will be fully powered up by everything that has happened in the entire series of draws/loops that happened just prior. While CC isn’t supper powerful we can have it resolve after we let it’s cast triggers get turned into DS. We can also do all of this with all the PG spread triggers waiting on the stack so when we start spreading CC it will doing so on a fully populated board state. So it’s like 1 extra wave of populate(tho likely not a fully IB powered one). It is 2x cast which is a nice bonus too.
I have put a little bit of thought into the standard deck, and I'm pretty sure we can complete whatever setup we need by turn 3 (and possibly go off that turn as well).
Turn 1:
land+ Llanowar Elves
Turn 2:
land + Marwyn, the Nurturer
Simple stuff so far, we have used 4 of our starting 7 cards and are about to draw our 9th giving us 5 cards in hand at the start of turn 3. Note that the lands are pretty unrestricted at this point, just that they are untapped and the first one makes green. Probably at least one of them makes blue.
Turn 3:
The recently spoiled Giant Growth on Marwyn. Marwyn taps for GGGG which is spent on a kicked Gift of Growth on Marwyn.
Marwyn now taps for 8xG and our two lands are still untapped. And we still have 3 whole cards in hand.
Here I see are several options:
We could go immediately for Emergency Powers and have access to pretty much anything, but we probably don't want to exile one already.
We could play an island and cast Omniscience and then a card draw spell like Chemister's insight into Thousand-Year Storm and jump start to draw enough to start going off. However, free spells might be hard to avoid infinites with.
We even have enough nongreen mana for straight land Thousand Year Storm, and a card draw spell into more untaps of Marwyn and mana rocks to turn green into other colors. (Pirate's Prize?) This route is narrow, but even if it doesn't work for turn 3, it should definitely be enough to go off turn 4.
Apex of Power is another option to get us kicked off, and seems safer than Omniscience.
Another route is by Experimental Frenzy which looks interesting as a gating mechanism. If we are recycling our deck with Clear the Mind then each time a copy resolves we get a card stuck in our hand until we spend R to sacrifice frenzy, which we can draw from the next Clear the Mind, but there's no way to cast the Frenzy with stuff on the stack, so we'd either need to resolve the whole stack, or put it into play with say an Emergency Powers. It seems like there may be an interaction with Runaway Steam-Kin as it would take 3 castings of frenzy to make the RRR to sacrifice it 3 times. However, this would require there be no other way to pump RSK and the forerunner is red... (RSK would be dying to the forerunner triggers a lot too so maybe they can coexist without going infinite?)
Other observations:
With an Arcane Adaptation
In addition to Raff Capashen giving our artifacts and legends (and sagas...) flash, we can give all our creatures flash with Arcane Adaptation naming dino and a death of Cherished Hatchling (also gives us a lot of on cast fight triggers). Also, the new Teferi, Time Raveler gives flash to our sorceries.
I don't see a way to make tokens of enchantments, However we can make copies of artifacts by first making them creatures with Skilled Animator, then using Quasiduplicate. We can also make copies of lands, though that seems less useful.
We also have access to a sideboard if we need it with Mastermind's Acquisition and War's Karn though I don't think that is likely to be needed.