This looks like a case of small numbers not telling the full story. We really aren't seeing the power of the Precursor Golem in the example you give.
Also, note that Board 2 has an advantage here, since you are tapping both the original Kiki-Jiki and the ones that you create from the Cackling Counterpart, so you are getting two-for-one. That isn't going to keep happening as you cast more Cackling Counterparts.
But yeah, FortyTwo's example of 20 Precursor Golems versus 10 Precursor Golems and 10 Kiki-Jikis is more telling. The 10 Kiki-Jikis can only do as much as 1 Precursor Golem in this case.
P.S. Please don't hesitate to bother us with any questions that you may have!
For example if we had your scenario as before but instead of 1 of each of the things we had 10
20 p golems, 10 doubling seasons
vs
10 p golems 10 kikis 10 doubling seasons.
When we cast CC in board 1 we get 20 golem triggers. when we resolve the first one, we get a target on each of the 10 doubling seasons and still have 19 more
In board 2, if we use the kikis to target each of the 10 doubling seasons that's the same as just one of the Golem triggers, making copies of the 10 doubling seasons and only have 10 more golem triggers.
In your example, Board 1 (20 Golem, 10 Doubling Season) does not even approach board 2 (10 Golem, 10 Kiki, 10 DS), even if every one of those Kiki Jikis is already tapped.
Consider board 1. How many times are we copying Doubling Season? 200 times. We have 10 Doubling Seasons, each being copied 20 times. 200 is a lot of times for Doubling Season to be copied...I can't even imagine how many Doubling Seasons are going to come into play on just the 100th resolution of Cackling Counterpart (but let's try to keep it in mind because the number will be relevant to what happens in board 2).
Board 2, we are only getting 100 copies of CC on Doubling Season right away. That's way lamer than 200! But then we move on to the ten Kiki Jikis, each with 10 Cackling Counterparts stacked on them. One copy of CC on Kiki Jiki resolves and makes.....how many Kiki Jikis? Its the same number we kept in mind from above. Importantly, those are ALL going to make more copies of Doubling Season!! 20 P Golems and 10 Doubling Seasons copy Doubling Season 200 times. 10 P Golems 10 Kiki and 10 Doubling Season copy Doubling Season some silly number that I sadly don't have the math skills to calculate. Then remember that was just one of our 100 Cackling Counterparts on Kiki Jiki we have coming.
The Kiki's in play aren't the thing to consider. Consider them tapped already; it doesn't matter. It is the the fact that there are going to be gajillions of them coming into play, each copying Doubling Season. A Cackling Counterpart resolving on a Kiki Jiki is immensely more powerful than one simply resolving on a Doubling Season. Rather than making 2^n Doubling Seasons, it makes 2^n Kiki Jikis, each of which successively makes 2^n Doubling Seasons.
Back to the original example, once we've resolved all of our Kiki's and copied all those Doubling Seasons, it means wayyyyy more P Golems coming into play at the end (even though there were 10 fewer copies of Cackling Counterpart on each and 10 fewer Golems to start with), meaning the next Cackling Counterpart is just going to get even crazier.
This effect is in fact so pronounced that just 3 Precursor Goelm, 1 Kiki Jiki (already tapped to make P Golems) and 1 Doubling Season plus a Cackling Counterpart will make more of everything than 20 Precursor Golems and 10 Doubling Seasons plus CC, and it isn't even remotely close.
The golem triggers will resolve one at a time, and spread the CC to everything that was made by the previous golem trigger. so we get 10 CC on doubling seasons, which make 2^^10 more doubling seasons. Then the next trigger resolves and also hits all of the new doubling seasons. We get way more than 200 copies of CC. Each extra precursor golem benefits from all of the previous ones.
The golem triggers will resolve one at a time, BEFORE Cackling Counterparts resolve. It will look like this:
20 P Golems 10 Doubling Season.
Cast CC targeting a Golem. Instantly 20 Golem triggers on the stack ABOVE the CC. So you’ll only get a trigger for the stuff currently in play. Now a CC is set to resolve 20 times on each thing. Then the CCs resolve.
You’ll cackling counterpart Doubling Season 200 times. Then cackle each P golem 20 times.
10 Golem 10 Kiki 10 Ds: Cast CC on a Golem. 10 triggers on the stack above CC. Now CC is set to resolve on each thing 10 times. 100 copies of cc on DS resolve. 1 copy cc on Kiki jiki resolves (2^n come into play where n is the number of doubling seasons in play). Each of those iteratively taps to make 2^n, then 2^(2^n).....and so on Doubling seasons. 99 cackling copies on Kiki jiki to go...
The copies of CC made by the golems go on top of the stack. (Comp rules 706.10: "To copy a spell or activated ability means to put a copy of it onto the stack")
Edit: to use a small example, lets just consider 2 precursor golems and 2 Doubling season.
We cast CC on a precursor and get 2 triggers
resolve the first one to make CCs that target the 3 other things. (ignoring the 3/3 vanilla golems)
The first one resolves and we get 4 more doubling seasons, then the second one resolves and we get 2^6=64 doubling seasons for a total of 70. Then we make a copy of the golem and make 2^70 more precursors.
Next the second Golem's trigger resolves, and radiates the CC to all of the doubling seasons.
Giving us approximately 2^70 plus 2^(2^70) plus 2^(2^(2^70)))... until get 70 iterations deep which will be approximately 2^^70.
Then the CCs resolve on the golems, and make (2^70)*2^(2^^70) more precursors. Which gets rounded to being between 2^^70 and 2^^71.
Yeah, no problem.
I think it would be a different story if precursor golem also triggered on abilities.
Edit: Throne of Eldrane Spoilers have been pretty dry for this challenge so far. The Adventuring mechanic seem like an interesting way to connect spells and creatures, shame that most of them are pretty vanilla and useless.
I still don't fully understand the current deck but Venerable Knight seems like the right kind of targeting restricted guy, though I think not needing a mana payment will allow for loops, and knights don't really fit into the creature type sequence.
Ok, so I'm thinking about attacking Modern next but figured that format probably (definitely?) has at least a hyperstage combo. Therefore, I should try and understand what structure to be looking for. After rereading a good chunk of the discussion here, and reading Deedlit's writeup like 4 more times, I am trying to understand what we have going on.
Other than Deedlit's writeup, the most indepth posts I found are #643, #1042, and a good chunk of ~30 posts starting at #1423. But one was before anything working was found, The second is the basis for Deedlit's writeup, and the last is about subtle problems in further stages, though it did provide this helpful diagram. I might have missed a post inbetween, but it doesn't seem like there's a satisfactory explanation of how to go from something like 10(->10)^20 (the ~20 stage decks like in post #633) to an actually working f_{w^2}(x) or higher combo.
One sticking point I have is with the procedure outlined in #643: (and sorry if this is bringing up ancient history)
1. Spend one I to put x PB on the stack.
2. Use one PB from the top of the stack to put y BM on the stack.
3. Use one BM from the top of the stack to generate some amount of O. {42's note: and increase x}
4. Use one PB from the top of the stack and one BM from the second position of the stack to generate one I.
5'. Use one L to convert all O into I and put one M on the stack.
6''. Use one M from the top of the stack and delete all I to increase L by one.
The first 4 are the normal stage structure, and very similar to the combo I am familiar with from standard. But adding 5' and 6'' as stated go infinite.
Starting with one L and 2 Os.
Then 5' gives us 2 I, and puts an M on the stack.
Convert all the I to many Os via the stage.
Use 6'' to pop the M from the stack, deleting all none of our Is and giving us our L back.
Now we have one L and many Os.
It looks like the decks that follow actually implement a rule more like:
6*:Use one M from the top of the stack and delete all I and all O to increase L by one.
Which seems like it might work the way we want? As we would need to dip beyond where M was on the stack to generate Os to use with the L to remake the stage.
There is a brief mention of adjusting 5 to
5'': Use one L and one I to convert all O into I and put one M on the stack.
Which also prevents the infinite because we won't have any I after resolving M. But this needs to steal an entire I from the next stage, which seems too expensive? The next stage would be permanently shrunk. I think it might still work, but resolving such a stack optimally seems much more complex than the other cases.
Stakfish's #1445 outlines how Mimic vat can be used as a lock for further higher order stages. But it looks like that 1 vat approach doesn't work yet.
Yeah, that outline doesn't quite work, since it misses the crucial part of needing to use up some of the next stage. What exactly is needed can vary, but it has to be something that we can't keep producing infinitely in the lower stage, and it can't be something that we can't afford to spend (So you're right, we can't afford to spend some of the stage resource, since that would cause us to lose a layer/layers each iteration, which is too much.). So it's something like 5'', but it's not I that we spend, it's something else.
In the megastage deck, (I think this is a good deck to work through, as the gigastage deck has a very complicated hyperstage), we have the main stage using Metallurgeons as its stage resource, and each Metallurgeon token can bounce both itself and other artifacts that we need to recycle. (So for example it can bounce Su-Chi, which gives us mana to pay to Allay and get a lot more enchantments.)
In the hyperstage, operations 5 and 6 are actually linked. We start by casting Deep Reconnaissance via flashback, which uses a green mana, so that's our L. This triggers the Spellweaver Volutes that we had already placed on Battle Cry, and Rebuild. We put the Volute triggers for Battle Cry first, and the trigger for Rebuild last. Each copy of Battle Cry untaps all of our tapped Metallurgeons, so that is operation 5 creating a lot of I, our stage resource of untapped Metallurgeons. So we implement a whole bunch of stages. After all the Battle Cries are exhausted, we get to the Rebuild, which is our operation 6. This bounces our Mox Emerald back to our hand, so that will allow us to get our L back. But, it also bounces all the other artifacts, including our Metallurgeons. So that gets rid of all the I.
So after all the Volutes are exhausted, we are somewhat back to where we started, with the green mana back, and more enchantments. But, we have gotten rid of all our Metallurgeon tokens, so we need to create more before we restart the hyperstage transition, or we Battle Cry will have nothing to untap. So we need to destroy the nontoken Metallurgeon so that we can create a token copy with Mimic Vat. Which means using a Psychic Battle trigger to target the nontoken Metallurgeon. Even if we only need to expend one Psychic Battle trigger in the lower stage, that still is something that we can only get finitely many times, so that's enough to keep from going infinite. And of course it's inexpensive enough so that we will get the full power of multiple stages.
That's basically the plan for all the N-stage transitions - we want to be more or less where we started, except that the board will be somewhat cleared, so that we will have to expend resources to restart the N-stage. Ideally, this is something small. But yeah, making sure that we need to spend something, but not too much, is one of the difficulties of creating many levels of stage.
Thanks a lot for the clarification, I was going down some other lines that don't appear to help the combo. (The only 'infinite' I found was using cards from different decks)
So just for completeness, the I in the Metallurgion stage is the number of hasty Metallurgions we have, and the O is white/blue mana, and other artifacts and especially enchantments.
Deep Reconnaissance is just used as a 'safe' green flashback spell? (it gets countered anyway but the TYS copies can resolve and do nothing, maybe Chatter of the Squirrel so we don't have to shuffle so much and make some friends for Acorn Harvest?)
I see from your writeup that we also need to be sneaky with the vedalken orrery so we can't replay the mox in between rebuilds if we enchant it with more Volutes. And even if we stack the Spellweaver Volute triggers differently, because they all trigger at the same time from the flashback spell, we can't stick a trigger that makes an Orrey in the middle.
(Spellweaver Volute is a really weird magic card.)
So that explains about the first third of the deck in #2006 and I think I have successfully wrapped my head around it and am satisfied that we turn X green mana into f_{w^2}_(X). There are at most X castings of Deep Reconnaissance on the stack at any one time, and each is divided by a full Metallurgion stage, and we can always rebuild the stack to exactly X stages with Rebuild. (I still think there might have been something working with Crafty Cutpurse in the standard deck that we just didn't find, so it seems a near certainty that Modern will have a combo at least this powerful).
It looks like the Worldpurge section is limited by 3 life chunks, while not being able to carry green mana over the Worldpurge boundary. The transition still seems tricky, but wormfang behemoth saves the hand and gerrard's verdict discarding island to regain the 3 life. How are we getting the island back to hand after discarding it?
And then the rest of the deck is a sequence of targeting restricted creatures, which are just powering up how much life we can pour into Acorn Harvest, AKA Worldpurge thanks to Spellweaver Helix.
After Gerrard's Verdict puts the Island in the graveyard, we use Perpetual Timepiece to put it back in the library, then Deep Reconnaissance to put it back on the battlefield. Then Worldpurge will bring it back to our hand. So that was the reason we had Deep Reconnaissance instead of Chatter of the Squirrel. Like with the Standard deck, we spend quite a bit of time whittling away at the deck, so that we could finally fit 13 stages in post-megastage.
Ok, yeah, that works I was trying to use Natural Affinity to make it a creature then bounce it with cowardice, but that required the goblin gardeners and didn't seem right.
And that way Worldpurge needs to resolve to get the life back, neatly implementing the gating structure between hyper-stages that we need. Though I think I am missing how we are recasting Geth's verdict. I thought that Panharmonicon was there to get double imprint triggers on Spellweaver Helix and cast both with one acorn harvest, but on rereading helix I'm not sure if that works? (Looks like it does?)
Well the pieces definitely make more sense now. Getting started is not even too bad.
Not optimal but a start like:
black lotus island mox emerald channel leaves us with GGU19 floating and 3 cards in hand
Rebuild washes 2U to G, and we have GGG17 and can Genesis Wave for as much as we need and still have a card like allay in hand.
Shows that getting started is possible. (Though this way Hurkyl's Recall would be slightly better than rebuild, does the cycling matter?)
I am now fairly confident that the deck in #2006 does not go infinite and gets to some F_{w^3+a}(x).
And even more of the w^4 deck from #2013 is starting to make sense, though it is definitely more complex.
After looking up the interaction of Spellweaver Helix and Panharmonicon, we get the following: When the Helix comes into play, each Panharmonicon creates an extra ETB trigger, which allows us to imprint another two sorceries on the Helix. Then, when we cast a spell with the same name as any one of the imprinted cards, the Helix allows us to cast a copy of all of the other imprinted cards! So, with at least one Panharmonicon in play when Spellweaver Helix enters the battlefield, we can imprint the four sorceries Acorn Harvest, Deconstruct, Worldpurge, and Gerrard's Verdict. Then, when we flashback Acorn's Harvest, we can cast the three spells Deconstruct, Worldpurge, and Gerrard's Verdict, which is perfect for the megastage.
For the start, we are better off going with Deconstruct rather than Rebuild, so that we can save the Rebuild for cycling. That's also the reason Rebuild is better than Hurkyl's Recall and Retract - each time we draw Rebuild, we can cycle it to draw Genesis Wave, so with the initial draw and 60 triggers of Floating-Dream Zubera, we can draw Genesis Wave 122 times, I think. I didn't see any of the other cards in the deck that we could replace with a cycler.
I described the start in an earlier post, but I have to go track it down.
Yeah that does appear to be how the rules work with the helix, though not how I would have thought they worked. Very nice interaction for us.
And good point about cycling, Rebuild appears to be the only option and it does allow us to double up the number of Genesis Wave draws. (we can make 60 zuberas and kill each of them without letting the draw triggers resolve to get 60x60 card draws).
Though killing a zubera needs a bit of work actually, as we need haste and we only have access to the top ~19 permanents of the deck, the only sources of haste are goblin bushwhacker and mimic vat. Bushwacker is a no go due to not being kickable from genesis wave, and needing red from the Black Lotus in our graveyard.
So we need to use Mimic vat, and imprint something that lets us target the zubera, but that creature needs haste too... and we are rapidly running out of our initial genesis wave cards. I had assumed that 19 or so would be easily enough to get started but it doesn't seem like quite enough?
Play the first three; we have GG left. Cast Deconstruct, sacrificing the Mox Emerald and turning 2 life into mana. Cast Genesis Wave with X = 13, revealing:
We put those into play, and we get two copies of each enchantment and creature, thanks to Dual Nature and Panharmonicon. Copy Enchantment and its token copies will copy Thousand-Year Storm. Before the Helix's imprint trigger resolves, we tap the Perpetual Timepiece to mill two [c}Acorn Harvest[/c]s, and we imprint one Acorn Harvest and Deconstruct.
We now convert 1 life to mana, and spend G1 and 3 life to use flashback on the Acorn Harvest in our graveyard. This triggers the Spellweaver Helix that we have imprinted with, so it allows us to cast Deconstruct. This triggers our 6 copies of Thousand-Year Storm, our 3 Psychic Battles and our 3 Cowardices. Each of the 3 Psychic Battles will also trigger Cowardice when we resolve them, so that allows us to bounce/destroy Su-Chi 4 times. We use the first two targetings to destroy the two token copies of Su-Chi, gaining us 8 colorless mana. Then we use the third targeting to bounce Su-Chi and replay it, getting us another 6 token copies. Then we use the fourth targeting to destroy a Su-Chi token, taking us to 12 colorless mana in our pool. We can use this to cast Allay with buyback 4 times.
The first Allay again gets triggers from 6TYSs, 3PBs and 3 Cowardices. So we get 4 bounces of enchantments at first. Each time we will bounce and replay Copy Enchtantment. After the first bounce, this will destroy our 4 token copies of TYS. On our first three replays of CE, we will leave the nontoken CE not copying anything, and have the token copies copy DN. This will increase our DNs to 9, 27 and 81. For the fourth replay, we will have the nontoken CE copy PB, getting us 162 token copies, for 3 + 1 + 162 = 166 PBs in total.
The first TYS trigger then resolves, getting us 5 copies of Allay. We resolve the first, getting us 167 bouncings of enchantments. For the first 177 we will double the number of Dual Natures, taking the number of DNs to 3^170 > 1.29 * 10^81 . Then on the 29th replay we will copy PB, getting us more than 2.58 * 10^81 copies of PB.
The second Allay will get us more than 2.58 * 10^81 bouncings, so we are up to more than 10^10^81 copies of PB and DN. After 3 more Allays, the number of DNs goes to more than 10^10^10^10^10^81, or more than 10^^6. The next 5 TYS triggers get us 25 more Allays, so we wind up with more than 10^^31 DNs, PBs, and TYSs in the end.
We can know cast Allay a second time, and we get more than 10^^31 TYS triggers. Each trigger will get us 6 copies of Allay, and each copy of Allay will get X copies and allow us to bounce Copy Enchantment X times, basically allowing us to perform exponentiation. So the second Allay will take our DNs, PBs, and TYSs to more than 10^^10^^31. Then the third will take us to more than 10^^10^^10^^31, and the fourth to more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31.
We now resolve the first TYS trigger for Deconstruct, which gets us 4 copies of Deconstruct. The first copy gets more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 bouncings or destructions of artifacts, thanks to all the PBs we have accumulated. We will need to bounce Su-Chi once, but then when we replay it we will get more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 copies, so we only need to bounce it once, and the remaining PBs can go towards destroying Su-Chi, getting us more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 colorless mana. This will allow us to cast Allay more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 times, and each casting will take X to about 10^^^X, so we finish wit more than 10^^^(10^^10^^10^^10^^31), or rounding down tremendously, more than 10^^^10. The next casting of Deconstruct will take us to more than 10^^^10^^^10, and so on, so after 24 castings of Deconstruct, we wind up with more than 10^^^^25 of DN's and TYS's.
We make sure to save a few colorless mana at the end, and have the last copy of Deconstruct sacrifice the Spellweaver Helix, so that we have GGG11 mana after all the Deconstructs are finished.
We hext exile the Perpetual Timepience, and put Genesis Wave and Black Lotus back into the library. We cycle the Rebuild to draw Genesis Wave, and we can cast Gensis Wave with X = 7. We get more than 10^^^^25 TYS triggers.
Genesis Wave with X = 7 can fetch all permanents except for Omniscience, which we already have on the battlefield. We can access all the instants/sorceries by milling them, except for Allay, which we have in our hand. So we can run the full combo up to Genesis Wave. We can fetch Black Lotus more than 10^^^^25 times, taking us to more than F_{w^3 + w13 + 3}(10^^^^25).
With the full combo at our disposal, we can certainly destroy 60 copies of Floating-Dream Zubera, allowing us to draw Genesis Wave and Rebuild 60 times each, taking us to more than F_{w^3 + w13 + 3}^121 (10^^^^25) > F_{w^3 + w13 + 4}(121).
We hext exile the Perpetual Timepience, and put Genesis Wave and Black Lotus back into the library. We cycle the Rebuild to draw Genesis Wave, and we can cast Genesis Wave with X = 7. We get more than 10^^^^25 TYS triggers.
Yeah, sure, I suppose that's what's next. Looking at the #2013 deck again.
Ok, so the basic structure is pretty similar, though using Karn, silver golem instead of March of the Machines. which means that animated artifacts stay creatures, and also that not everything is animated at the same time. This also means that noncreature artifacts can't enter as a creature. (Karn can only target noncreature artifacts so we are Cowardice safe {I think there might be a subtle rules issue here actually, but the cards in the deck don't run into it})
Oh and we have Chalice of the void instead of Cephalid Shrine? That seems like it will be annoying to keep on the right values (though karn can kill it easily)
And we don't have Dual Nature? How are we making copies of things? Just through Mimic Vat? It seems real hard to get enough vats(+Mirrorworks)
We have infinite colorless via Karn+Mana Crypt+Salvaging Station. (and infinite Salvaging Station taps) Obelisk of Bant gives us all of the bant mana very cheaply. Also Tribal Unity seems like it probably goes infinite with infinite mana.
We use Phantataog and Skull of Orim to turn metallurgion taps into enchantments. Though without Copy Enchantment we can't make copies of auras? (specifically Spellweaver Volute)
In post 2041 the math is slightly worse than you indicated. As the first genesis wave is resolving and attempting to put copy enchantment into play(along with everything else) CE cannot copy Thousand-year storm. TYS and CE are entering at the same time and CE can only become something that is already in play. When CE is looking at possible options as it enters, TYS isn’t one of those options as it itself is still in the process of entering as well. An interesting(and beneficial) trigger layering result here is that the tokens we get from dual nature via panharmonicon can copy TYS because when those tokens of CE are made and try to enter TYS is then in play and is copiable.
So the only change in the math appears that we will start with 5 copies of TYS instead of 6. I was worried that CE would have just gone straight to the graveyard but because it’s not an actual creature clone it doesn’t enter as a default 0/0 and die to state based effects. So it does change the math slightly in scale. It doesn’t fundamentally change how everything works, it just slows it down a bit.
I’ve been lurking but haven’t chimed in lately, but been following progress. Also great work forty two on the standard write up, good to see it come to fruition and presented in it’s nearly optimized iteration. Also along those lines, I’d love to dive into getting an early jump on the next std damage list, but I can leave that to the other thread.
Thanks for the praise, and I'm really glad your observation between Saheeli and double face cards made it into the final deck because it is a super rare interaction and very nice.
It is probably too early to look at new standard, though I am really glad we can finally make copies of TYS, (via Dance of the manse + quasiduplicate). But we lose a lot of the key support cards to the rotation (Omniscience).
Probably starting a new thread will be better for organization, we don't want newcomers to have to delve through 30+ pages of outdated tech (after all that's what this thread is for, haha)
As a Tribal Unity replacement, there is surprisingly little that is similar, Tribal Forcemage is like the only other card that does the same thing?
I think we have a viable work around of not having omniscience. We can make many TYS and then use those to get many copies of electrodominance. This could be both good as a omniscience work around and also give us a good limiting factor as making red mana would be a cap/lock of sorts for casting certain spells we could only cast off the free clause of electrodominance. It was an idea I kicked around very early last time as a possible alternative if using omniscience proved to be too good. Again just my early thoughts on it. I think the fact we need dance x = 6 might cause some issues. We are going to have to be very careful with enchantments and artifacts as we will always be able to animate them and then make copies of them. This could be pretty limiting on what we have access to.
The issue with electrodominance is that it is not nearly as good at making a complex stack, as each copy would need to resolve to be able to put the next spell we want to cast on the stack.
Adventures are probably going to play a key role as we would have 2 ways to recast the spell: either counter it and reshuffle it like normal, or let it fully resolve and bounce the creature. So something like Ionize and Noxious Grasp seems like maybe a start (Unfortunately, those don't quite balance in life payments (and eliminates any other way to make a bunch of green/white creatures such as quasiduplicate))
Of course this all hinges on there being a good way to get things back from the graveyard, as we also lose Gaea's Blessing to the rotation (and The Mending of Dominaria too), and a better option is likely TBD.
Ok, so the basic structure is pretty similar, though using Karn, silver golem instead of March of the Machines. which means that animated artifacts stay creatures, and also that not everything is animated at the same time. This also means that noncreature artifacts can't enter as a creature. (Karn can only target noncreature artifacts so we are Cowardice safe {I think there might be a subtle rules issue here actually, but the cards in the deck don't run into it})
I think either Karn, Silver Golem or March of the Machines will work, but Karn seems a bit more efficient since we don't have to recycle it like we do with March of the Machines.
Oh and we have Chalice of the void instead of Cephalid Shrine? That seems like it will be annoying to keep on the right values (though karn can kill it easily)
And we don't have Dual Nature? How are we making copies of things? Just through Mimic Vat? It seems real hard to get enough vats(+Mirrorworks)
Yeah, we got rid of Dual Nature because it caused some unfortunate interactions, I think with Child of Alara specifically. That was quite a while back though, we can reexamine it to see if it still causes problems.
So yeah, that does make the start harder. I think going through the start was something I never got around to doing, since I still wasn't quite confident in the deck working with no infinities.
Do we really need a lot of Mimic Vats? Keep in mind that we can destroy/bounce the Mimic Vat once it is activated, and the ability will still resolve once we get to it. Earlier we had the thought of doing the whole combo with just one Mimic Vat; I don't know if that totally works, but in this deck we have Mirrorworks, so it should be fine.
We have infinite colorless via Karn+Mana Crypt+Salvaging Station. (and infinite Salvaging Station taps) Obelisk of Bant gives us all of the bant mana very cheaply. Also Tribal Unity seems like it probably goes infinite with infinite mana.
I think having the infinite mana combo saved a card, so that helped out a bit. But whoops, it does look like that goes infinite with Tribal Unity. We can fix it by going back to Reality Spasm, which loses a layer.
Also, I wouldn't mind hearing your opinion on infinite mana combos in the deck. I think J_kibbs has said we should just go for the maximum damage allowable under the rules, so if an infinite mana combo helps, so be it. As I recall, Iijil voiced a similar opinion.
We use Phantataog and Skull of Orim to turn metallurgion taps into enchantments. Though without Copy Enchantment we can't make copies of auras? (specifically Spellweaver Volute)
Hmm, I can't remember if I had a solution to that, but right now it looks like an oversight. So yeah, add Copy Enchantment back in. We can't cut any more cards from the final layers, so we will have to cut a stage, down to five.
But the only way to kill the green creatures is Engineered Explosives, which requires a Rebuild to be able to put sunburst into it.
I feel like that's a start, but not the full story of this stage quite yet?
The main stage is just the Metallurgeons; if we have a bunch of untapped Metallurgeon tokens, we can tap one to target the nontoken Metallurgeon, and destroy it, imprinting it on a Mimic Vat, and allowing us to create another token. We can use other Psychic Battle triggers to target other artifacts, like Mimic Vat, Mirror of Fate, Perpetual Timepiece, and Mirrorworks. Bouncing Skull of Orm will get us more enchantment copies, and move the deck forward.
The rest of those cards are for the hyperstage. I will talk more about the hyperstage in a little bit; admittedly, it is very complicated.
Edit: Good to hear from you J_kibbs! Great point about Copy Enchantment not being able to copy Thousand-Year Storm; that will take our 10^^^^25 number down to 10^^^^21. The final estimate of F_{w^3 + w13 + 4}(121) remains the same.
Yeah, destroying/bouncing vats is easy once we start tapping metallurgions, but before that it looks difficult.
Karn allows for the infinite mana combo, which probably makes things easier, especially at the start. though if we need to go back to MotM for the Tribal Unity layer (infinite mana is fine, as long as we cant turn extra mana into extra damage, I'm ok with all infinites that don't turn into damage.)
And yeah I meant the hyperstage, the Metallurgion+PB+BM stage is very similar (need to Mirror the real Metallurgion off the vat and then mill it with the Timepiece for the next BM trigger, but those are all very cheap actions).
So the resource for the hyperstage is the Razorfin Abolisher tokens. We generally have Boggart Mob on the battlefield, Championing the Goblin Dark-Dwellers. We can tap an untaped Razorfin Abolisher token, and target Boggart Mob a bunch of times. We will bounce Boggart Mob, which brings Goblin Dark-Dwellers back into play, triggering its ETB multiple times thanks to Panharmonicon. We use those to cast both Battle Cry and Rebuild. Battle Cry will of course untap all of Metallurgeon tokens, and Rebuild will bounce all of our artifacts back to our hand, including all the Metallurgeons. It will also bounce Engineered Explosives, which we can cast using one color of mana to put one counter on it. Then, we can sacrifice it to destroy Jade Bearer. Verdant Succession then brings Jade Bearer back, and we can target the nontoken Razorfin Abolisher to destroy it, and imprint it on a Mimic Vat to gain a hasted token back.
So that's the basic idea. Obviously there are a lot of moving parts, so we need to check it carefully, so that there isn't something sneaky that we can do to go infinite. Another thing that we have to worry about is the megastage transition - after we complete a hyperstage, and transition down to the hyperstage below, we have to make sure that we don't have a net gain in resources, which would allow us to go infinite. But we also have to make sure that we aren't down a Razorfin Abolisher token or more, since that would be too expensive for the megastage transition.
Oh, and thanks for your comments and corrections, FortyTwo!
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Also, note that Board 2 has an advantage here, since you are tapping both the original Kiki-Jiki and the ones that you create from the Cackling Counterpart, so you are getting two-for-one. That isn't going to keep happening as you cast more Cackling Counterparts.
But yeah, FortyTwo's example of 20 Precursor Golems versus 10 Precursor Golems and 10 Kiki-Jikis is more telling. The 10 Kiki-Jikis can only do as much as 1 Precursor Golem in this case.
P.S. Please don't hesitate to bother us with any questions that you may have!
In your example, Board 1 (20 Golem, 10 Doubling Season) does not even approach board 2 (10 Golem, 10 Kiki, 10 DS), even if every one of those Kiki Jikis is already tapped.
Consider board 1. How many times are we copying Doubling Season? 200 times. We have 10 Doubling Seasons, each being copied 20 times. 200 is a lot of times for Doubling Season to be copied...I can't even imagine how many Doubling Seasons are going to come into play on just the 100th resolution of Cackling Counterpart (but let's try to keep it in mind because the number will be relevant to what happens in board 2).
Board 2, we are only getting 100 copies of CC on Doubling Season right away. That's way lamer than 200! But then we move on to the ten Kiki Jikis, each with 10 Cackling Counterparts stacked on them. One copy of CC on Kiki Jiki resolves and makes.....how many Kiki Jikis? Its the same number we kept in mind from above. Importantly, those are ALL going to make more copies of Doubling Season!! 20 P Golems and 10 Doubling Seasons copy Doubling Season 200 times. 10 P Golems 10 Kiki and 10 Doubling Season copy Doubling Season some silly number that I sadly don't have the math skills to calculate. Then remember that was just one of our 100 Cackling Counterparts on Kiki Jiki we have coming.
The Kiki's in play aren't the thing to consider. Consider them tapped already; it doesn't matter. It is the the fact that there are going to be gajillions of them coming into play, each copying Doubling Season. A Cackling Counterpart resolving on a Kiki Jiki is immensely more powerful than one simply resolving on a Doubling Season. Rather than making 2^n Doubling Seasons, it makes 2^n Kiki Jikis, each of which successively makes 2^n Doubling Seasons.
Back to the original example, once we've resolved all of our Kiki's and copied all those Doubling Seasons, it means wayyyyy more P Golems coming into play at the end (even though there were 10 fewer copies of Cackling Counterpart on each and 10 fewer Golems to start with), meaning the next Cackling Counterpart is just going to get even crazier.
This effect is in fact so pronounced that just 3 Precursor Goelm, 1 Kiki Jiki (already tapped to make P Golems) and 1 Doubling Season plus a Cackling Counterpart will make more of everything than 20 Precursor Golems and 10 Doubling Seasons plus CC, and it isn't even remotely close.
What am I missing here??
Kiki's effect is not spread in this same way.
The golem triggers will resolve one at a time, BEFORE Cackling Counterparts resolve. It will look like this:
20 P Golems 10 Doubling Season.
Cast CC targeting a Golem. Instantly 20 Golem triggers on the stack ABOVE the CC. So you’ll only get a trigger for the stuff currently in play. Now a CC is set to resolve 20 times on each thing. Then the CCs resolve.
You’ll cackling counterpart Doubling Season 200 times. Then cackle each P golem 20 times.
10 Golem 10 Kiki 10 Ds: Cast CC on a Golem. 10 triggers on the stack above CC. Now CC is set to resolve on each thing 10 times. 100 copies of cc on DS resolve. 1 copy cc on Kiki jiki resolves (2^n come into play where n is the number of doubling seasons in play). Each of those iteratively taps to make 2^n, then 2^(2^n).....and so on Doubling seasons. 99 cackling copies on Kiki jiki to go...
Isn’t this how it’ll work?
Edit: to use a small example, lets just consider 2 precursor golems and 2 Doubling season.
We cast CC on a precursor and get 2 triggers
resolve the first one to make CCs that target the 3 other things. (ignoring the 3/3 vanilla golems)
The first one resolves and we get 4 more doubling seasons, then the second one resolves and we get 2^6=64 doubling seasons for a total of 70. Then we make a copy of the golem and make 2^70 more precursors.
Next the second Golem's trigger resolves, and radiates the CC to all of the doubling seasons.
Giving us approximately 2^70 plus 2^(2^70) plus 2^(2^(2^70)))... until get 70 iterations deep which will be approximately 2^^70.
Then the CCs resolve on the golems, and make (2^70)*2^(2^^70) more precursors. Which gets rounded to being between 2^^70 and 2^^71.
I think it would be a different story if precursor golem also triggered on abilities.
Edit: Throne of Eldrane Spoilers have been pretty dry for this challenge so far. The Adventuring mechanic seem like an interesting way to connect spells and creatures, shame that most of them are pretty vanilla and useless.
I still don't fully understand the current deck but Venerable Knight seems like the right kind of targeting restricted guy, though I think not needing a mana payment will allow for loops, and knights don't really fit into the creature type sequence.
Other than Deedlit's writeup, the most indepth posts I found are #643, #1042, and a good chunk of ~30 posts starting at #1423. But one was before anything working was found, The second is the basis for Deedlit's writeup, and the last is about subtle problems in further stages, though it did provide this helpful diagram. I might have missed a post inbetween, but it doesn't seem like there's a satisfactory explanation of how to go from something like 10(->10)^20 (the ~20 stage decks like in post #633) to an actually working f_{w^2}(x) or higher combo.
One sticking point I have is with the procedure outlined in #643: (and sorry if this is bringing up ancient history)
The first 4 are the normal stage structure, and very similar to the combo I am familiar with from standard. But adding 5' and 6'' as stated go infinite.
Starting with one L and 2 Os.
Then 5' gives us 2 I, and puts an M on the stack.
Convert all the I to many Os via the stage.
Use 6'' to pop the M from the stack, deleting all none of our Is and giving us our L back.
Now we have one L and many Os.
It looks like the decks that follow actually implement a rule more like:
6*:Use one M from the top of the stack and delete all I and all O to increase L by one.
Which seems like it might work the way we want? As we would need to dip beyond where M was on the stack to generate Os to use with the L to remake the stage.
There is a brief mention of adjusting 5 to
5'': Use one L and one I to convert all O into I and put one M on the stack.
Which also prevents the infinite because we won't have any I after resolving M. But this needs to steal an entire I from the next stage, which seems too expensive? The next stage would be permanently shrunk. I think it might still work, but resolving such a stack optimally seems much more complex than the other cases.
Stakfish's #1445 outlines how Mimic vat can be used as a lock for further higher order stages. But it looks like that 1 vat approach doesn't work yet.
In the megastage deck, (I think this is a good deck to work through, as the gigastage deck has a very complicated hyperstage), we have the main stage using Metallurgeons as its stage resource, and each Metallurgeon token can bounce both itself and other artifacts that we need to recycle. (So for example it can bounce Su-Chi, which gives us mana to pay to Allay and get a lot more enchantments.)
In the hyperstage, operations 5 and 6 are actually linked. We start by casting Deep Reconnaissance via flashback, which uses a green mana, so that's our L. This triggers the Spellweaver Volutes that we had already placed on Battle Cry, and Rebuild. We put the Volute triggers for Battle Cry first, and the trigger for Rebuild last. Each copy of Battle Cry untaps all of our tapped Metallurgeons, so that is operation 5 creating a lot of I, our stage resource of untapped Metallurgeons. So we implement a whole bunch of stages. After all the Battle Cries are exhausted, we get to the Rebuild, which is our operation 6. This bounces our Mox Emerald back to our hand, so that will allow us to get our L back. But, it also bounces all the other artifacts, including our Metallurgeons. So that gets rid of all the I.
So after all the Volutes are exhausted, we are somewhat back to where we started, with the green mana back, and more enchantments. But, we have gotten rid of all our Metallurgeon tokens, so we need to create more before we restart the hyperstage transition, or we Battle Cry will have nothing to untap. So we need to destroy the nontoken Metallurgeon so that we can create a token copy with Mimic Vat. Which means using a Psychic Battle trigger to target the nontoken Metallurgeon. Even if we only need to expend one Psychic Battle trigger in the lower stage, that still is something that we can only get finitely many times, so that's enough to keep from going infinite. And of course it's inexpensive enough so that we will get the full power of multiple stages.
That's basically the plan for all the N-stage transitions - we want to be more or less where we started, except that the board will be somewhat cleared, so that we will have to expend resources to restart the N-stage. Ideally, this is something small. But yeah, making sure that we need to spend something, but not too much, is one of the difficulties of creating many levels of stage.
So just for completeness, the I in the Metallurgion stage is the number of hasty Metallurgions we have, and the O is white/blue mana, and other artifacts and especially enchantments.
Deep Reconnaissance is just used as a 'safe' green flashback spell? (it gets countered anyway but the TYS copies can resolve and do nothing, maybe Chatter of the Squirrel so we don't have to shuffle so much and make some friends for Acorn Harvest?)
I see from your writeup that we also need to be sneaky with the vedalken orrery so we can't replay the mox in between rebuilds if we enchant it with more Volutes. And even if we stack the Spellweaver Volute triggers differently, because they all trigger at the same time from the flashback spell, we can't stick a trigger that makes an Orrey in the middle.
(Spellweaver Volute is a really weird magic card.)
So that explains about the first third of the deck in #2006 and I think I have successfully wrapped my head around it and am satisfied that we turn X green mana into f_{w^2}_(X). There are at most X castings of Deep Reconnaissance on the stack at any one time, and each is divided by a full Metallurgion stage, and we can always rebuild the stack to exactly X stages with Rebuild. (I still think there might have been something working with Crafty Cutpurse in the standard deck that we just didn't find, so it seems a near certainty that Modern will have a combo at least this powerful).
It looks like the Worldpurge section is limited by 3 life chunks, while not being able to carry green mana over the Worldpurge boundary. The transition still seems tricky, but wormfang behemoth saves the hand and gerrard's verdict discarding island to regain the 3 life. How are we getting the island back to hand after discarding it?
And then the rest of the deck is a sequence of targeting restricted creatures, which are just powering up how much life we can pour into Acorn Harvest, AKA Worldpurge thanks to Spellweaver Helix.
It looks like you are getting it!
And that way Worldpurge needs to resolve to get the life back, neatly implementing the gating structure between hyper-stages that we need. Though I think I am missing how we are recasting Geth's verdict. I thought that Panharmonicon was there to get double imprint triggers on Spellweaver Helix and cast both with one acorn harvest, but on rereading helix I'm not sure if that works? (Looks like it does?)
Well the pieces definitely make more sense now. Getting started is not even too bad.
Not optimal but a start like:
black lotus island mox emerald channel leaves us with GGU19 floating and 3 cards in hand
Rebuild washes 2U to G, and we have GGG17 and can Genesis Wave for as much as we need and still have a card like allay in hand.
Shows that getting started is possible. (Though this way Hurkyl's Recall would be slightly better than rebuild, does the cycling matter?)
I am now fairly confident that the deck in #2006 does not go infinite and gets to some F_{w^3+a}(x).
And even more of the w^4 deck from #2013 is starting to make sense, though it is definitely more complex.
For the start, we are better off going with Deconstruct rather than Rebuild, so that we can save the Rebuild for cycling. That's also the reason Rebuild is better than Hurkyl's Recall and Retract - each time we draw Rebuild, we can cycle it to draw Genesis Wave, so with the initial draw and 60 triggers of Floating-Dream Zubera, we can draw Genesis Wave 122 times, I think. I didn't see any of the other cards in the deck that we could replace with a cycler.
I described the start in an earlier post, but I have to go track it down.
And good point about cycling, Rebuild appears to be the only option and it does allow us to double up the number of Genesis Wave draws. (we can make 60 zuberas and kill each of them without letting the draw triggers resolve to get 60x60 card draws).
Though killing a zubera needs a bit of work actually, as we need haste and we only have access to the top ~19 permanents of the deck, the only sources of haste are goblin bushwhacker and mimic vat. Bushwacker is a no go due to not being kickable from genesis wave, and needing red from the Black Lotus in our graveyard.
So we need to use Mimic vat, and imprint something that lets us target the zubera, but that creature needs haste too... and we are rapidly running out of our initial genesis wave cards. I had assumed that 19 or so would be easily enough to get started but it doesn't seem like quite enough?
We draw the following:
Black Lotus
Mox Emerald
Channel
Deconstruct
Genesis Wave
Allay
Rebuild
Play the first three; we have GG left. Cast Deconstruct, sacrificing the Mox Emerald and turning 2 life into mana. Cast Genesis Wave with X = 13, revealing:
Omniscience
Vedalken Orrery
Opalescence
Dual Nature
Copy Enchantment
Cowardice
Psychic Battle
Thousand-Year Storm
Perpetual Timepiece
Spellweaver Helix
Su-Chi
Horobi, Death's Wail
Panharmonicon
We put those into play, and we get two copies of each enchantment and creature, thanks to Dual Nature and Panharmonicon. Copy Enchantment and its token copies will copy Thousand-Year Storm. Before the Helix's imprint trigger resolves, we tap the Perpetual Timepiece to mill two [c}Acorn Harvest[/c]s, and we imprint one Acorn Harvest and Deconstruct.
We now convert 1 life to mana, and spend G1 and 3 life to use flashback on the Acorn Harvest in our graveyard. This triggers the Spellweaver Helix that we have imprinted with, so it allows us to cast Deconstruct. This triggers our 6 copies of Thousand-Year Storm, our 3 Psychic Battles and our 3 Cowardices. Each of the 3 Psychic Battles will also trigger Cowardice when we resolve them, so that allows us to bounce/destroy Su-Chi 4 times. We use the first two targetings to destroy the two token copies of Su-Chi, gaining us 8 colorless mana. Then we use the third targeting to bounce Su-Chi and replay it, getting us another 6 token copies. Then we use the fourth targeting to destroy a Su-Chi token, taking us to 12 colorless mana in our pool. We can use this to cast Allay with buyback 4 times.
The first Allay again gets triggers from 6TYSs, 3PBs and 3 Cowardices. So we get 4 bounces of enchantments at first. Each time we will bounce and replay Copy Enchtantment. After the first bounce, this will destroy our 4 token copies of TYS. On our first three replays of CE, we will leave the nontoken CE not copying anything, and have the token copies copy DN. This will increase our DNs to 9, 27 and 81. For the fourth replay, we will have the nontoken CE copy PB, getting us 162 token copies, for 3 + 1 + 162 = 166 PBs in total.
The first TYS trigger then resolves, getting us 5 copies of Allay. We resolve the first, getting us 167 bouncings of enchantments. For the first 177 we will double the number of Dual Natures, taking the number of DNs to 3^170 > 1.29 * 10^81 . Then on the 29th replay we will copy PB, getting us more than 2.58 * 10^81 copies of PB.
The second Allay will get us more than 2.58 * 10^81 bouncings, so we are up to more than 10^10^81 copies of PB and DN. After 3 more Allays, the number of DNs goes to more than 10^10^10^10^10^81, or more than 10^^6. The next 5 TYS triggers get us 25 more Allays, so we wind up with more than 10^^31 DNs, PBs, and TYSs in the end.
We can know cast Allay a second time, and we get more than 10^^31 TYS triggers. Each trigger will get us 6 copies of Allay, and each copy of Allay will get X copies and allow us to bounce Copy Enchantment X times, basically allowing us to perform exponentiation. So the second Allay will take our DNs, PBs, and TYSs to more than 10^^10^^31. Then the third will take us to more than 10^^10^^10^^31, and the fourth to more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31.
We now resolve the first TYS trigger for Deconstruct, which gets us 4 copies of Deconstruct. The first copy gets more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 bouncings or destructions of artifacts, thanks to all the PBs we have accumulated. We will need to bounce Su-Chi once, but then when we replay it we will get more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 copies, so we only need to bounce it once, and the remaining PBs can go towards destroying Su-Chi, getting us more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 colorless mana. This will allow us to cast Allay more than 10^^10^^10^^10^^31 times, and each casting will take X to about 10^^^X, so we finish wit more than 10^^^(10^^10^^10^^10^^31), or rounding down tremendously, more than 10^^^10. The next casting of Deconstruct will take us to more than 10^^^10^^^10, and so on, so after 24 castings of Deconstruct, we wind up with more than 10^^^^25 of DN's and TYS's.
We make sure to save a few colorless mana at the end, and have the last copy of Deconstruct sacrifice the Spellweaver Helix, so that we have GGG11 mana after all the Deconstructs are finished.
We hext exile the Perpetual Timepience, and put Genesis Wave and Black Lotus back into the library. We cycle the Rebuild to draw Genesis Wave, and we can cast Gensis Wave with X = 7. We get more than 10^^^^25 TYS triggers.
Genesis Wave with X = 7 can fetch all permanents except for Omniscience, which we already have on the battlefield. We can access all the instants/sorceries by milling them, except for Allay, which we have in our hand. So we can run the full combo up to Genesis Wave. We can fetch Black Lotus more than 10^^^^25 times, taking us to more than F_{w^3 + w13 + 3}(10^^^^25).
With the full combo at our disposal, we can certainly destroy 60 copies of Floating-Dream Zubera, allowing us to draw Genesis Wave and Rebuild 60 times each, taking us to more than F_{w^3 + w13 + 3}^121 (10^^^^25) > F_{w^3 + w13 + 4}(121).
This was the step I was missing, thanks!
(also a lot of the optimizations)
Do you want to start looking at the gigastage deck? If you have any questions, I'll do my best to help!
Ok, so the basic structure is pretty similar, though using Karn, silver golem instead of March of the Machines. which means that animated artifacts stay creatures, and also that not everything is animated at the same time. This also means that noncreature artifacts can't enter as a creature. (Karn can only target noncreature artifacts so we are Cowardice safe {I think there might be a subtle rules issue here actually, but the cards in the deck don't run into it})
Oh and we have Chalice of the void instead of Cephalid Shrine? That seems like it will be annoying to keep on the right values (though karn can kill it easily)
And we don't have Dual Nature? How are we making copies of things? Just through Mimic Vat? It seems real hard to get enough vats(+Mirrorworks)
We have infinite colorless via Karn+Mana Crypt+Salvaging Station. (and infinite Salvaging Station taps) Obelisk of Bant gives us all of the bant mana very cheaply. Also Tribal Unity seems like it probably goes infinite with infinite mana.
We use Phantataog and Skull of Orim to turn metallurgion taps into enchantments. Though without Copy Enchantment we can't make copies of auras? (specifically Spellweaver Volute)
The metallurgion stage looks complex, we are using Goblin dark dwellers to recast battle cry and Boggart Mob to get a bunch of the etb triggers. Boggart mob is a warrior and thanks to Bramblewood Paragon, can be targeted by Razorfin Abolisher who can be targeted by Jade Bearer's ETB. Verdant succession can also fetch the green creatures after they die.
But the only way to kill the green creatures is Engineered Explosives, which requires a Rebuild to be able to put sunburst into it.
I feel like that's a start, but not the full story of this stage quite yet?
In post 2041 the math is slightly worse than you indicated. As the first genesis wave is resolving and attempting to put copy enchantment into play(along with everything else) CE cannot copy Thousand-year storm. TYS and CE are entering at the same time and CE can only become something that is already in play. When CE is looking at possible options as it enters, TYS isn’t one of those options as it itself is still in the process of entering as well. An interesting(and beneficial) trigger layering result here is that the tokens we get from dual nature via panharmonicon can copy TYS because when those tokens of CE are made and try to enter TYS is then in play and is copiable.
So the only change in the math appears that we will start with 5 copies of TYS instead of 6. I was worried that CE would have just gone straight to the graveyard but because it’s not an actual creature clone it doesn’t enter as a default 0/0 and die to state based effects. So it does change the math slightly in scale. It doesn’t fundamentally change how everything works, it just slows it down a bit.
I’ve been lurking but haven’t chimed in lately, but been following progress. Also great work forty two on the standard write up, good to see it come to fruition and presented in it’s nearly optimized iteration. Also along those lines, I’d love to dive into getting an early jump on the next std damage list, but I can leave that to the other thread.
Jkibbs
Thanks for the praise, and I'm really glad your observation between Saheeli and double face cards made it into the final deck because it is a super rare interaction and very nice.
It is probably too early to look at new standard, though I am really glad we can finally make copies of TYS, (via Dance of the manse + quasiduplicate). But we lose a lot of the key support cards to the rotation (Omniscience).
Probably starting a new thread will be better for organization, we don't want newcomers to have to delve through 30+ pages of outdated tech (after all that's what this thread is for, haha)
As a Tribal Unity replacement, there is surprisingly little that is similar, Tribal Forcemage is like the only other card that does the same thing?
Jkibbs
Adventures are probably going to play a key role as we would have 2 ways to recast the spell: either counter it and reshuffle it like normal, or let it fully resolve and bounce the creature. So something like Ionize and Noxious Grasp seems like maybe a start (Unfortunately, those don't quite balance in life payments (and eliminates any other way to make a bunch of green/white creatures such as quasiduplicate))
Of course this all hinges on there being a good way to get things back from the graveyard, as we also lose Gaea's Blessing to the rotation (and The Mending of Dominaria too), and a better option is likely TBD.
I think either Karn, Silver Golem or March of the Machines will work, but Karn seems a bit more efficient since we don't have to recycle it like we do with March of the Machines.
Oh, I think Chalice of the Void was just a holdover from an earlier deck, Cephalid Shrine makes more sense.
Yeah, we got rid of Dual Nature because it caused some unfortunate interactions, I think with Child of Alara specifically. That was quite a while back though, we can reexamine it to see if it still causes problems.
So yeah, that does make the start harder. I think going through the start was something I never got around to doing, since I still wasn't quite confident in the deck working with no infinities.
Do we really need a lot of Mimic Vats? Keep in mind that we can destroy/bounce the Mimic Vat once it is activated, and the ability will still resolve once we get to it. Earlier we had the thought of doing the whole combo with just one Mimic Vat; I don't know if that totally works, but in this deck we have Mirrorworks, so it should be fine.
I think having the infinite mana combo saved a card, so that helped out a bit. But whoops, it does look like that goes infinite with Tribal Unity. We can fix it by going back to Reality Spasm, which loses a layer.
Also, I wouldn't mind hearing your opinion on infinite mana combos in the deck. I think J_kibbs has said we should just go for the maximum damage allowable under the rules, so if an infinite mana combo helps, so be it. As I recall, Iijil voiced a similar opinion.
Hmm, I can't remember if I had a solution to that, but right now it looks like an oversight. So yeah, add Copy Enchantment back in. We can't cut any more cards from the final layers, so we will have to cut a stage, down to five.
The main stage is just the Metallurgeons; if we have a bunch of untapped Metallurgeon tokens, we can tap one to target the nontoken Metallurgeon, and destroy it, imprinting it on a Mimic Vat, and allowing us to create another token. We can use other Psychic Battle triggers to target other artifacts, like Mimic Vat, Mirror of Fate, Perpetual Timepiece, and Mirrorworks. Bouncing Skull of Orm will get us more enchantment copies, and move the deck forward.
The rest of those cards are for the hyperstage. I will talk more about the hyperstage in a little bit; admittedly, it is very complicated.
Edit: Good to hear from you J_kibbs! Great point about Copy Enchantment not being able to copy Thousand-Year Storm; that will take our 10^^^^25 number down to 10^^^^21. The final estimate of F_{w^3 + w13 + 4}(121) remains the same.
Karn allows for the infinite mana combo, which probably makes things easier, especially at the start. though if we need to go back to MotM for the Tribal Unity layer (infinite mana is fine, as long as we cant turn extra mana into extra damage, I'm ok with all infinites that don't turn into damage.)
And yeah I meant the hyperstage, the Metallurgion+PB+BM stage is very similar (need to Mirror the real Metallurgion off the vat and then mill it with the Timepiece for the next BM trigger, but those are all very cheap actions).
So that's the basic idea. Obviously there are a lot of moving parts, so we need to check it carefully, so that there isn't something sneaky that we can do to go infinite. Another thing that we have to worry about is the megastage transition - after we complete a hyperstage, and transition down to the hyperstage below, we have to make sure that we don't have a net gain in resources, which would allow us to go infinite. But we also have to make sure that we aren't down a Razorfin Abolisher token or more, since that would be too expensive for the megastage transition.
Oh, and thanks for your comments and corrections, FortyTwo!