So we don't need another card, and which makes the Mirrorwing Dragon / Hunting Pack combo better than the Splicer combo, since then we can replace Precursor Golem by Consecrated Sphinx, which I think does more (We get an extra layer and also more iterations, since we can access the full deck sooner.).
We can also use Retrofitter Foundry to make the 4/4s, if that makes the stack any easier to handle. Panharmonicon goes infinite with Changeling Hero: you can exile multiple cards under it, then fail to exile and sacrifice it. I forget the exact details of the combo, but it's pretty much impossible to work around.
Speaking of workarounds... I forgot about this, but the only reason Thousand-Year Storm isn't allowed is because it lets you save an untapped Muzzio during the transition. If we can find another way to force us to use a Muzzio, we can go back to Thousand-Year Storm and save several slots.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do that. One option would be to tie putting instants and sorceries into the graveyard to Muzzio: that way, in order to replay Hurkyl's Recall, you have to activate your extra Muzzio so Goblin Dark-Dwellers can target it. But anything Muzzio fetches can also get bounced by Hurkyl's Recall. I guess we could have Muzzio grab an artifact land, triggering Hedron Crab, but then I don't know how we'd keep the Crab alive through the megastage.
Well, there's one thing I thought about with respect to the Soul Foundry deck: In the absence of Mirrorworks, we can't replay a Vedalken Orrery after it is brought back to our hand, so the only way we could put it into play would be to somehow get it into the library, and then fetch it with Muzzio. So that could possibly use up the extra Muzzio?
Actually, I think Artifact Mutation is TOO safe: we can make a Clockwork Gnomes token, but then we have no way of getting it back to the battlefield afterwards. To profit a token each time, we need the instant's effect to persist after resolving.
Oh, I see what you're saying. I'm worried about the potential for creating a Clockwork Gnomes token in between Hurkyl's Recall casts, but I'm also not sure what if anything that would break, so I think that should be safe.
So assuming that does work, and being optimistic about how well we can start, our deck is looking like this:
I'm not sure, but I think that the Millikin shenanigans are actually superfluous. Assuming I haven't forgotten an infinite past me learned to avoid, we can swap it for Millstone and make this list a little less unreasonably complicated. Then we just have to figure out the megastage transition, somehow...
I think we still need Vital Splicer, to create lots of Precursor Golems. That brings up the question, how are we getting Vital Splicer back after Worldfire clears the board?
Moot at this point with the golems, but I missed that the centaur safeguard is a multicolored creature and so survives with the bloodbond marches.
Vital splicer is green so we can use a verdant succession trigger from a Child of alara transition further down.
looking at other 1 cmc self targeting creatures, and everything that's close to working is white except for skyshroud archer who needs to have flying, but it seems difficult to give just it flying instead of levitating the whole team.
hmm, good point we don't seem to have a way of moving creatures out of the graveyard? (other than bloodbond march which requires them to go to hand which we can't do for the centaur or the splicer). Would something as heavy handed as Wheel of Sun and Moon or Rest in Peace work?
When Child of Alara's ability resolves, the Mimic Vats will still trigger on those creatures dying: you just can't make token copies of them after you exile, because the vats aren't around. Then, as long as you've championed Vedalken Orrery under Changeling Hero, you can stack the triggers like so:
Vedalken Orrery comes in, and you replay Mirror of Fate from your hand (well, Mirrorworks too so you can spend the token and keep access to the original, which is important). Mimic Vat exiles the green creatures, and you activate a Mirror to tuck them in the library. Then Verdant Succession pulls them back out.
Perhaps we could have something that tapped noncreature artifacts, or gave some permanents (including Mirror of Fate) some tap ability. Blinkmoth Well and Synod Artificer can tap noncreature artifacts, but they seem too expensive. Didn't see anything that granted nondangerous tap abilities.
Edit: I thought about adding card that can sacrifice Goblins, so we can cheaply move Squee from the battlefield to exile and back. But, that might cause problems with Changeling Hero again.
Can we switch to the non golem creature that can champion a goblin dark dwellers: Boggart Mob here or is 4 cmc a problem? We wont get flash back fast, but can wait for a Mirrorworks trigger like in the other decks.
(Though that would also mean we can't get creatures back with that mimic vat+mirror line)
Another possibility is to use Moggcatcher, which can retrieve Goblin Dark-Dwellers rather than Champion it. There, you can use the fact that it is Human, which leads to our Human deck. Since Moggcatcher has a tap ability, we can actually use Moggcatcher as our resource creature, but hooking into Humans turned out to be complicated. I guess we didn't figure out a way to hook into Mercenaries.
Other than that, I dunno... maybe target a red creature? Then we would have to go back to Soul Foundry, since Child of Alara is red, and it would cut off further red creatures.
Stakfish's idea was to use a self-targeting creature as our resource creature, which can save on card slots. But there doesn't seem to be a way to use a creature to target itself and also Boggart Mob or Moggcatcher. So the idea was to switch to a Changeling creature that can Champion. That makes it work, but unfortunately, we've found that Changelings lead to all sorts of problems.
In the Chalice deck, we can save a single Muzzio, Visionary Architect through the hyperstage transition, which is enough to go infinite. To avoid that, we need to force the deck to use that Muzzio during the transition, without letting it just play another Goryo's Vengeance afterwards to get a replacement Muzzio. The only way I see to do that, at least feasibly, is by forcing Muzzio to get out Chalice of the Void itself. To do THAT, we need to make some critical part of the hyperstage transition rely on RESOLVING a 2-mana spell some time AFTER we cast Anaba Ancestor to get Bloodbond March triggers. If we can resolve it any time, we can just play it first, then play Chalice on 2 and follow it up with the Ancestor.
Of the steps in the hyperstage transition, the ones which need to be done after casting Anaba Ancestor are:
Killing enchantments. After we put Anaba Ancestor on Mimic Vat, the only way of getting it back in the graveyard is by killing a green enchantment, imprinting it on the same vat to put the Ancestor in the graveyard, then using Mirror of Fate to put the enchantment in the library and using the Verdant Succession trigger from killing it to put it back on the battlefield. If we can't kill enchantments, we can only put Ancestor in the library, not the graveyard, and we'll fizzle.
Bouncing Chalice of the Void so we can replay it. If we can't resolve the bounce spell or a copy of the bounce spell through a Chalice, then there's no way to set Chalice back to 4. That's why I cut Thousand-Year Storm from the version I posted here, but that introduces its own host of problems.
Milling generic cards. Hurkyl's Recall is in our exile/library when we enter the transition, and to recast it and bounce the Chalice, we have to get it into the graveyard. Theoretically, we could mill it any time in the transition, but because we're using Millikin, getting Recall in the graveyard can only be done AFTER using Engineered Explosives. That only gives us the timing restriction, though: it still doesn't force us to use Muzzio every time we mill. If we go this route, we also have to make sure we can't do the same thing with Goryo's Vengeance, which would let us get another untapped Muzzio.
Get Vedalken Orrery back after the second Recall. This seems like a dead end, but in the interest of completeness, it's there.
If we can find a way to make any one of those things rely on activating Muzzio, then we can throw Thousand-Year Storm back in and make everything much, much easier.
I'll think about that some more. In the meantime though, I've had an idea. What about using Forerunner of Slaughter to bounce our artifacts using mana? Of course, we would have to go back to using Metallurgeon, which I guess has a problem due to needing a CMC 1 resource creature. Perhaps we could keep Cenn's Tactician though, if we avoided using Battle Cry. But perhaps Goryo's Vengeance is no good with Metallurgeon being the same CMC? Still, we had some other artifact creating combos which used CMC 3 instants, like Rend Spirit and Yuki-Onna.
Of those bullet points the only one that seems likely to rely on resolving a 2 mana spell is killing enchantments.
However most card types are off limits for this, Lands dont have cmc 2, instants and sorceries can have their TYS copies resolve (and already could at least target the enchantments), Planeswalkers cant be activated and don't have any useful passives, creatures can get brought back with bloodbond march, artifacts are similarly limited (and generally dont care about enchantments).
The only way I can see to make killing enchantments rely on resolving a 2 mana spell,is a two mana enchantment that targets other enchantments on etb. which doesn't exist (...yet, Theros in an enchantment themed set). The closest are the naturalize/disenchant seals and those also hit artifacts.
Hmm, actually we might be thinking about this a bit wrong, the goal is to force us to reset chalice again right? while it is currently on 2? could we make a self sacrificing enchantment destroyer like elf replica work? we would need that to be countered with chalice at not 2. (hmm Mirrorworks means that bouncing and replaying it is too cheap? I think it would work if elf replica was legendary?)
Maybe something like kithkin spellduster? Though we would still need to be able to bounce it after, hmm.
And maybe I'm just wrong with how the chalice lines work, they are still confusing to me.
Yeah, perhaps the idea is to have a creature that is not CMC 2, and make us require Bloodbond March triggers from it? (presumably because we need to sacrifice it) I guess the worry there is, if we can cast it earlier, then proceed with the hyperstage transition, and set the Chalice to 2 then. Then we get to the Bloodbond March trigger after the hyperstage transition.
Concerning the Forerunner of Slaughter idea - if we do switch to Metallurgeon and Cenn's Tactitian, what is required of the instants? Would they both have to be CMC 1? Or would it be enough to have Retract be CMC 1, and use something like Goryo's Vengeance or Rend Spirit for the other instant? If we leave the Chalice at 1, then we can't get Retract out, so we don't get Engineered Explosives back. So it seems like that would not be repeatable, even if we get more Metallurgeons using the other instant.
There's another property that Boggart mob has that we can use to single it out: color.
so using Lightbringer to bounce/exile boggart mob doesn't kill child of alara, might work? (also the tokens would sac themselves and not get untapped by battlecry) And rebel is not too bad of a type to work with too.
So Lightbringer or Krosan Constrictor could serve as our resource creatures, but we need a way to hook them into Engineered Explosives. Unfortunately, Kor, Rebel, and Snake, don't look so promising. I can't find a good way to hook in via white or green creatures either; cards like Hazduhr the Abbot and Paragon of Eternal Wilds are too expensive. Maybe I'm missing something though.
Yeah this would be with the soul foundry shell
snakes and kor are pretty much instant dead ends so its just rebels.
Rebels seem like they should probably work? Lin sivvi, defiant hero or Rebel informer seem probably a little too good. Hmm I had thought that brutal suppression was more useful...
Yeah it looks like the godtoucher deck is much easier to link back with EE, so it'll be ahead on cards vs a lightbringer version.
The Godtoucher deck is the obvious one to look at, since it already doesn't have Mirrorworks. So after removing Copper Gnomes, the only way we can save Vedalken Orrery is to put it in the library, so that it can be fetched by Muzzio. But Rebuild brings the Orrery to our hand, so it isn't easy to get it into the library from there. We need a sacrifice or discard outlet. Saproling Cluster should work. On the other side, having Muzzio means we don't need Wormfang Behemoth, since we can get back artifacts? So we will have something like:
So we don't need another card, and which makes the Mirrorwing Dragon / Hunting Pack combo better than the Splicer combo, since then we can replace Precursor Golem by Consecrated Sphinx, which I think does more (We get an extra layer and also more iterations, since we can access the full deck sooner.).
Speaking of workarounds... I forgot about this, but the only reason Thousand-Year Storm isn't allowed is because it lets you save an untapped Muzzio during the transition. If we can find another way to force us to use a Muzzio, we can go back to Thousand-Year Storm and save several slots.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do that. One option would be to tie putting instants and sorceries into the graveyard to Muzzio: that way, in order to replay Hurkyl's Recall, you have to activate your extra Muzzio so Goblin Dark-Dwellers can target it. But anything Muzzio fetches can also get bounced by Hurkyl's Recall. I guess we could have Muzzio grab an artifact land, triggering Hedron Crab, but then I don't know how we'd keep the Crab alive through the megastage.
Of course, now we are without Mirrorworks, so we have to figure out how to deal with sacrifice artifacts like Mirror of Fate and Perpetual Timepiece. The idea was to use something like Copy Artifact or Mirrormade, but you've pointed out that those go infinite with Clockwork Gnomes. The previous idea was to replace Mirror of Fate with Pull from Eternity, cast using Izzet Guildmage. But of course Izzet Guildmage can cast both Goryo's Vengeance and Hurkyl's Recall. Previous decks used Riftsweeper, which would be flickered using Changeling Hero, but I don't think we bounce Changeling Hero enough to use it that way.
Edit: Hmm, is a cheap instant that targets artifacts safe? Artifact Mutation is a CMC 2 spell, so it can fit in with Goryo's Vengeance and Hurkyl's Recall. Artifact Mutation can create a Clockwork Gnomes token, but not after Hurkyl's Recall, so it looks safe. Then, we can use Vital Splicer and Precursor Golem to create lots of Precursor Golems, so we can generate a bajillion copies of Artifact Mutation. And since it's castable using Goblin Dark-Dwellers, we don't need the Sephara combo anymore.
Actually, I think Artifact Mutation is TOO safe: we can make a Clockwork Gnomes token, but then we have no way of getting it back to the battlefield afterwards. To profit a token each time, we need the instant's effect to persist after resolving.
Actually, if we switched to a 1cmc creature instead of Anaba Ancestor, we could switch to Metallurgeon and Battle Cry again... Wait, the only creature that would fit is Cenn's Tactician, which is also white.
Artifact Mutation is just there to restore progress, so we can keep recycling our other artifacts, allowing us to create many enchantment tokens.
So assuming that does work, and being optimistic about how well we can start, our deck is looking like this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Chalice of the Void
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Millikin
13 Phantatog
14 Mirrorworks
15 Mana Vault
16 Simic Keyrune
17 Skull of Orm
18 Clockwork Gnomes
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Hurkyl's Recall
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Anaba Ancestor
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Artifact Mutation
35 Spellweaver Helix
36 Worldfire
37 Spider Spawning
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Titania, Protector of Argoth
41 Multani's Decree
42 Bayou
43 Eureka
44 Elvish Spirit Guide
45 Vastwood Animist
46 Grassland Crusader
47 Western Paladin
48 Frightshroud Courier
50 Ghosthelm Courier
51 Devout Chaplain
52 Royal Assassin
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Reality Spasm
58 Precursor Golem
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Reforge the Soul
I'm not sure, but I think that the Millikin shenanigans are actually superfluous. Assuming I haven't forgotten an infinite past me learned to avoid, we can swap it for Millstone and make this list a little less unreasonably complicated. Then we just have to figure out the megastage transition, somehow...
Vital splicer is green so we can use a verdant succession trigger from a Child of alara transition further down.
looking at other 1 cmc self targeting creatures, and everything that's close to working is white except for skyshroud archer who needs to have flying, but it seems difficult to give just it flying instead of levitating the whole team.
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Changeling Hero champion trigger returning Vedalken Orrery
Mimic Vat exile triggers for the relevant green creatures
Verdant Succession triggers for the same.
Vedalken Orrery comes in, and you replay Mirror of Fate from your hand (well, Mirrorworks too so you can spend the token and keep access to the original, which is important). Mimic Vat exiles the green creatures, and you activate a Mirror to tuck them in the library. Then Verdant Succession pulls them back out.
Another problem: Changeling Hero is also a Golem, so Vital Splicer won't work.
Sadly, it doesn't work for Mirror of Fate, but if we replace the Royal Assassin stage at the bottom, we can use Glimmerdust Aura to turn mana into copies of Mimic Vat and Skull of Orm as needed.
Perhaps we could have something that tapped noncreature artifacts, or gave some permanents (including Mirror of Fate) some tap ability. Blinkmoth Well and Synod Artificer can tap noncreature artifacts, but they seem too expensive. Didn't see anything that granted nondangerous tap abilities.
In terms of replacements for Mirror of Fate, besides Riftsweeper and Pull from Eternity, there are some creatures that can be returned from exile, including Misthollow Griffin, Eternal Scourge, Sengir Nosferatu, and Squee, the Immortal. So we could imprint those creatures to return an exiled card the graveyard. None of those seem cheap enough though.
Edit: I thought about adding card that can sacrifice Goblins, so we can cheaply move Squee from the battlefield to exile and back. But, that might cause problems with Changeling Hero again.
(Though that would also mean we can't get creatures back with that mimic vat+mirror line)
Another possibility is to use Moggcatcher, which can retrieve Goblin Dark-Dwellers rather than Champion it. There, you can use the fact that it is Human, which leads to our Human deck. Since Moggcatcher has a tap ability, we can actually use Moggcatcher as our resource creature, but hooking into Humans turned out to be complicated. I guess we didn't figure out a way to hook into Mercenaries.
Other than that, I dunno... maybe target a red creature? Then we would have to go back to Soul Foundry, since Child of Alara is red, and it would cut off further red creatures.
Stakfish's idea was to use a self-targeting creature as our resource creature, which can save on card slots. But there doesn't seem to be a way to use a creature to target itself and also Boggart Mob or Moggcatcher. So the idea was to switch to a Changeling creature that can Champion. That makes it work, but unfortunately, we've found that Changelings lead to all sorts of problems.
In the Chalice deck, we can save a single Muzzio, Visionary Architect through the hyperstage transition, which is enough to go infinite. To avoid that, we need to force the deck to use that Muzzio during the transition, without letting it just play another Goryo's Vengeance afterwards to get a replacement Muzzio. The only way I see to do that, at least feasibly, is by forcing Muzzio to get out Chalice of the Void itself. To do THAT, we need to make some critical part of the hyperstage transition rely on RESOLVING a 2-mana spell some time AFTER we cast Anaba Ancestor to get Bloodbond March triggers. If we can resolve it any time, we can just play it first, then play Chalice on 2 and follow it up with the Ancestor.
Of the steps in the hyperstage transition, the ones which need to be done after casting Anaba Ancestor are:
If we can find a way to make any one of those things rely on activating Muzzio, then we can throw Thousand-Year Storm back in and make everything much, much easier.
However most card types are off limits for this, Lands dont have cmc 2, instants and sorceries can have their TYS copies resolve (and already could at least target the enchantments), Planeswalkers cant be activated and don't have any useful passives, creatures can get brought back with bloodbond march, artifacts are similarly limited (and generally dont care about enchantments).
The only way I can see to make killing enchantments rely on resolving a 2 mana spell,is a two mana enchantment that targets other enchantments on etb. which doesn't exist (...yet, Theros in an enchantment themed set). The closest are the naturalize/disenchant seals and those also hit artifacts.
Hmm, actually we might be thinking about this a bit wrong, the goal is to force us to reset chalice again right? while it is currently on 2? could we make a self sacrificing enchantment destroyer like elf replica work? we would need that to be countered with chalice at not 2. (hmm Mirrorworks means that bouncing and replaying it is too cheap? I think it would work if elf replica was legendary?)
Maybe something like kithkin spellduster? Though we would still need to be able to bounce it after, hmm.
And maybe I'm just wrong with how the chalice lines work, they are still confusing to me.
Concerning the Forerunner of Slaughter idea - if we do switch to Metallurgeon and Cenn's Tactitian, what is required of the instants? Would they both have to be CMC 1? Or would it be enough to have Retract be CMC 1, and use something like Goryo's Vengeance or Rend Spirit for the other instant? If we leave the Chalice at 1, then we can't get Retract out, so we don't get Engineered Explosives back. So it seems like that would not be repeatable, even if we get more Metallurgeons using the other instant.
so using Lightbringer to bounce/exile boggart mob doesn't kill child of alara, might work? (also the tokens would sac themselves and not get untapped by battlecry) And rebel is not too bad of a type to work with too.
Sootstoke kindler is also interesting but has haste itself
So Lightbringer or Krosan Constrictor could serve as our resource creatures, but we need a way to hook them into Engineered Explosives. Unfortunately, Kor, Rebel, and Snake, don't look so promising. I can't find a good way to hook in via white or green creatures either; cards like Hazduhr the Abbot and Paragon of Eternal Wilds are too expensive. Maybe I'm missing something though.
snakes and kor are pretty much instant dead ends so its just rebels.
Rebels seem like they should probably work? Lin sivvi, defiant hero or Rebel informer seem probably a little too good. Hmm I had thought that brutal suppression was more useful...
Yeah it looks like the godtoucher deck is much easier to link back with EE, so it'll be ahead on cards vs a lightbringer version.
The Godtoucher deck is the obvious one to look at, since it already doesn't have Mirrorworks. So after removing Copper Gnomes, the only way we can save Vedalken Orrery is to put it in the library, so that it can be fetched by Muzzio. But Rebuild brings the Orrery to our hand, so it isn't easy to get it into the library from there. We need a sacrifice or discard outlet. Saproling Cluster should work. On the other side, having Muzzio means we don't need Wormfang Behemoth, since we can get back artifacts? So we will have something like:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Soul Foundry
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Mirrormade
12 Karn, Silver Golem
13 Perpetual Timepiece
14 Mimic Vat
15 Phantatog
16 Skull of Orm
17 Mana Crypt
18 Azorius Keyrune
19 Rust Tick
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Goryo's Vengeance
23 Rebuild
24 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
25 Boggart Mob
26 Godtoucher
27 Wirewood Herald
28 Engineered Explosives
29 Saproling Cluster
31 Army of the Damned
32 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
33 Collar the Culprit
34 Child of Alara
35 Aven Riftwatcher
36 Ramosian Commander
37 Spellweaver Helix
38 Worldfire
39 Acorn Harvest
40 Acorn Harvest
41 Yarok, the Desecrated
42 Molderhulk
43 Divine Congregation
44 Forest
45 Eureka
46 Elvish Spirit Guide
47 Everglove Courier
48 Grassland Courier
49 Western Paladin
50 Frightshroud Courier
52 Ghosthelm Courier
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Karplusan Yeti
57 Reality Spasm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom