I don't see any problems currently with the Razorfin Abolisher deck currently, although of course we should keep looking at it. Right now, it is at like F_{w^4 + w6 + 4}(50), I think.
For the Chalice of the Void deck, I believe the current solution is Sephara, Sky's Blade + Maze Glider + Mirrorwing Dragon + Hunting Pack? Except that that doesn't work with Centaur Safeguard, so we have to switch that out I guess. The best that I can think of is one of our K'rrik setups, although perhaps there is something better with this deck design. Anyway, if the K'rrik setups work we have something like:
which would get us about F_{w^4 + w6 + 1}(3) or thereabouts. We lose layers due to losing Thousand-Year Storm and Consecrated Sphinx, so it is a bit behind the Razorfin Abolisher deck at the moment.
Yeah, centaur safeguard being multicolored is an unfortunate complication from maze glider. that K'rrik line looks backwards though? we could cast spider spawning in place of moan, and gain too much life?
Forerunner looks tricky to use, a self targeting creature that doesn't tap seems very dangerous.
Forerunner of Slaughter just targets colorless creatures, so just artifacts and itself. So it's just a way to target artifacts for mana, allowing us to recover after Child of Alara or Worldfire hits.
Yeah, we would have to take out Mana Vault. And I guess Sol Ring is out of the question too; we have to stick with one mana generating artifacts.
But, that leaves us with the problem with how we are supposed to generate mana in the first place. Could replacing Karn by March of the Machines help? If we replace Phantatog with Allay, it will cost us three mana to recycle March of the Machines. So three mana for Allay and one for Forerunner of Slaughter, which we want to match with four mana from artifacts. Mana Vault can generate four mana by itself with the help of Mirrorworks, so that plus a Keyrune is too much. Maybe a Sol Ring and two Azorius Keyrunes? Then bouncing all three will generate us four mana, but it will cost us four mana to do so. But with Metallurgeon tokens, we can bounce for free, so we will gain an advantage in mana that way.
A possibly cheaper possibility is to use Mana Echoes; then to generate mana, a Metallurgeon can just bounce itself. We can have just Forerunner of Slaughter and a single Azorius Keyrune. But, then we can't have creature typed colorless artifacts, so no Myr Welder or Millikin. I don't know if that is a dealbreaker.
Edit: Metallurgeon needs to target a creature to for Cowardice to trigger. So I'm pretty sure we cant have Metallurgeon make mana but not Forerunner.
Maybe a colored artifact that makes mana? There was Midnight clock and The Great Henge in Throne of elkdrane, but those have other problems. There's also the cycle of borderposts which etb tapped. and would need Amulet of Vigor
Edittwo: Fieldmist Borderpost+amulet actually might work? Though being able to bounce the land causes other troubles. (and startup looks awful)
Fieldmist Borderpost is interesting; we can solve the land problem by not being able to play or discard a land from our hand, or by simply not having a basic land. But, we are again presented with the problem of how we gain mana. I guess we can go to Allay again, and get a bunch of bouncings from a single cast. But, we would need several Psychic Battles to start gaining a profit, so startup might be difficult.
Oh right the borderpost needs a basic, so that's fine.
As for making mana, duplicating Amulet of Vigor with mimic vat (or more efficiently with mirrorworks), gets us more and more untaps per Metallurgeon psychic battle bounce. So I think we are ok there once we get going, (assuming we can get started).
Edit:
In terms of other mana rocks, one that looks interesting and doesn't go infinite with forerunner is Shrine of Boundless Growth, though again it doesnt really help with startup.
Yeah I thought there was something good that unfortunately ETB tapped, but there's really not much.
One interesting note is the vivid lands, they can give us exactly 2 mana of any color and tons of mana of one color. But they don't seem to fit in at all.
We get another space with the forerunner+borderpost+amulet construction for restoring progress in 3 cards instead of 4. Actually even better because the borderpost replaces the keyrune too.
Oh and without maze glider we can go back to Centaur Safeguard + Verdant succession which is also smaller than the K'rrik setup. (though we do lose the efficient everglove courier stage for it)
So that's enough for another stage bringing us up to 8 or even 9(!?) stages again? Well ahead of the other decks.
I think its time to actually carefully step through how the chalice decks work, and make sure that we can do everything we think we can and can't do things we think we can't do.
Edit:and make sure we can get started because after an opening hand of ESG+land+crypt+eureka+omniscience+sphinx+sphinx we have 5 cards and no mana.
also since we can't have a basic i was looking at other green lands and can we possibly use pendlehaven as the land with vastwood animist to make it a 1/1 to target each other? I think it goes infinite?
Editedit:
I was writing out a long very mana tight line with all the extra cards we can draw, but then i remembered we have a mana crypt. It is much easier with bouncing our Mana crypt with recall a few times via goblin dark dwellers gives us enough mana to start profiting from mirrorworks copies of amulet and borderpost.
I think we will want to get Mirrorworks of Mirrorworks, but we might not be able to fit that draw in early.
editeditedit:
Oh wait this is assuming Metallurgeon which was incompatible with the chalice lines? Hmm. looks like it was a problem with Millikin?? is that even still an issue?
Hmm, switching back to Centaur Safeguard is problematic, since we need to have green mana if we use Acorn Harvest at that point, and we will also have white mana for Metallurgeon if we make that switch. That plus blue mana for Omniscience casting will allow us to use Engineered Explosives on Centaur Safeguard rather than cast Acorn Harvest, so that's no good.
We can fix things if we eliminate blue mana, and use Academy Rector and Misery Charm to recover the Omniscience. So we get:
Right we need to keep our EE colors low. and it doesn't look like there's a good way to make green also limited like that. (altar of the lost also makes spider spawning mana) {Can we use Retrace instead? Savage Conception is unfortunately double green, and Throes of chaos can't possibly be safe right? Edit: Hmm maybe Cenn's Enlistment+Realm seekers?}
I dont see why the K'rrik transitions wouldn't work with chalice.
Though I think there might've been something with metallurgeon and millikin both being at 2 causing some conflict? I think Stakfish had something about that not actually being an issue?
Edit:
also we are spending a ton of mana on rebuilding, it's ok once we get going but that does take a while.
we make our mana from just two sources: mana crypt and Borderpost
Mana crypt makes us a flat 2 mana every time it gets bounced (just by recall)
WE dont start making a profit from mirrorworking borderpost until we have at least 3 amulets.
Making amulets costs 2 per mirrorworks and then 1 more to make it a creature and 1/(1+PBs) more to bounce the original to get more mirrorworks triggers. at the start we only have one each of mirrorworks and PB so a cost of 3.5x-5 mana.
It takes 4 amulets to properly start pulling ahead and that costs 9 mana to get setup, (sanity check we pay for mirrorworks 3 times, animate it twice with karn and activate forerunner once 3*2+2+1=9). The very first metallurgeon needs to be killed with EE=2(?) which costs another 4 mana, and then activating mimic vat is 3 more, and activating the token is another 1 so we will want to have at least 17 mana. That is at least 6 recalls before we can actually profit mana? seems a bit daunting to do it efficiently at the start.
Or, the same number of stages as the old deck with Spider Spawning. I guess it is okay to use the same land for both Cenn's Enlistment and tapping for green mana? I don't see an obvious problem with that.
Yeah, Stakfish mentioned in his earlier description that it was important that Clockwork Gnomes have a different CMC than Millikan and Myr Welder, but then later he said that perhaps Millikin wasn't even needed, and could be replaced with something like Millstone. So perhaps it is okay; we have to investigate.
Hmm yeah, that's getting us to the same spot. I guess verdant succession is a slightly better multiplier? Oh, and can we replace one of the Spellweaver helix copies of the graveyard spell with Panharmonicon now? That will certainly help with the start.
Well, the K'rrik version has one more stage, so we would like to use that one, if possible.
I think Panharmonicon has a problem with Changeling Hero. We can bounce Changeling Hero. Then, we can play and counter it, to get Bloodbond March triggers. We bring the Hero back to the battlefield, where it triggers multiple times thanks to Panharmonicon. We exile Goblin Dark-Dwellers with the first trigger. We sacrifice Changeling Hero with the second trigger. This brings the Dark-Dwellers back to the battlefield, where it triggers to cast our spells. Then Changeling Hero can be brought back to the battlefield with another Bloodbond March trigger.
This seems similar to the normal process, but the difference is that we can choose when to play the Changeling Hero, and subsequently trigger the ETB of Goblin Dark-Dwellers; this is different from the ETB triggering when we bounced Changeling Hero using a [c}Psychic Battle[/c] trigger. So we can prepare for the ETB trigger, doing things like putting a Mirrorworks trigger for Vedalken Orrery on the stack, for instance.
Hmm, is that really different? this still needs to be started by bouncing the changeling hero via PB. It seems like it just lets us also use the BBM triggers.
We could do the same thing with panharmonicon being in some of the Boggart mob lists?
It seems like if there is an issue it's probably when we champion more than just one card. (I think that was the problem with Lumbering Battlement?)
We can bounce the Changeling Hero via a Psychic Battle trigger. Then, we can do whatever preparations we need, such as tapping a bunch of Metallurgeon tokens to build up a ministage, and bouncing Vedalken Orrery and replaying it to get a Mirroworks trigger. Then, we can replay the Changeling Hero, and do the exile/sacrifice thing to exile Goblin Dark-Dwellers, then bring it back to the battlefield. So I think this is bad news, although I haven't made sure that we can do absolutely everything that we need to. But it seems that we can so long as we bring up enough Metallurgeon tokens, and it's worth it to expend those if we can get hyperstage creature tokens in return.
So yeah, it looks like Panharmonicon is a problem with bout the Changeling Hero and the Boggart Mob setups.
Ah, hmm, that does seem troubling. Too bad, panharmonicon would be very helpful for the start. looks like the earlier boggart mob decks have some inefficiency that prevents that infinite? As we did talk about champion tricks early on.
Another pseudo champion creature is Wormfang drake but flying/blue creature don't seem as easy to pick out as any creature type like Changeling hero.
Also, rather than retrace, I think we can use reduce // rubble? As it has cmc 6 in the graveyard. (Possibly even some that target on the front half? Actually no because with 3 copies of it we can imprint 2 on the spellweaver helix and get targeting when we cast the graveyard copy.) so driven // despair is the only other one that works.
Aftermath cards are also weird with spell queller only the front half gets cast from spell queller, even if the queller originally countered the aftermath half. Unfortunately, I don't think this observation is useful on any of the existing cards though.
Hey guys. Doing my usual lurking thing watching u guys grind through the mess of interactions going on in these vintage decks. Really cool stuff btw.
With standard kinda being awful atm and my normal magic formats around me also being kinda stale/boring I’ve been finding myself pondering these max damage decks more and more. I do love the brewing challenge and I do really want to try to grasp the stage mechanics. I think in principal I understand it as a concept, but being able to convert an idea into the math is something I’m just not that good at. So knowing if I have something potent is tough for me to judge a lot of the time.
Anyway I have a 60 card list written up. I’m still working out exactly what order to do what in, but I have an fully written list. I’m reasonably sure I’ve avoided infinite’s as the same core mechanisms have been there from the start and I’ve done my best to vet the deck as I’ve incorporated new ideas/cards.
I don’t want to interrupt the great discussion you guys are working on, but I’d love some feedback on my ideas. Just figured I’d ask before posting a huge post that really isn’t super relevant to the stuff you guys are discussing currently.
J_kibbs: Feel free to post your deck! I guess ideally, we would have multiple threads, so we could have one thread with the gigastage deck, and another with J_kibbs decks maybe; but it's probably not a good idea to create too many threads for this challenge.
Yeah standard is not exelky the best right now. Oko needs to go, and maybe more, but that's a discussion for another thread. I was planning on trying to make a modern/pioneer version, but got kinda sucked into the vintage tech.
As for explaining stage combos, I may be biased, but I think the one from the prerotation standard is easiest to understand. But in general they all work the same:
We have a fair amount of some input resource I (white mana, untapped hasty tokens, life, etc)
We can use one of them to put x copies of effect A on the stack. (in the vintage decks these are psychic battle triggers)
We can resolve an A to get x copies of effect B. (Bloodbond march triggers)
We can resolve A with a B below it to get one I back. (<- This step is what allows us to rebuild)
We can also resolve As and/or Bs to increase x (Psychic battle to bounce our artifacts to make mana to copy enchantments)
Optimally, using those rules is a little tricky, but we basically want to spend an I then resolve an A to make Bs until we run out of Is. This creates a stack that looks like AAAABBBBBAAAABBBBBAAAABBBBB. Once we have no Is we start resolving the very topmost layer of triggers and increasing x as we do. But once we get to the very last A in that topmost batch we can use the B below it to make an I, and make an entirely fresh top layer of As and Bs except now x is bigger and there's one fewer B in the second from the top layer of Bs.
Eventually those Bs will run out,but we can use an A from the layer below them to refill with even more Bs.
Once those As run low, the top of the stack looks like ...BBABA and we can resolve the top four elements to get two I and rebuild all the way to the same number of layers as before, but with in each layer being much bigger, but that used one of the lower Bs, which will eventually need to be refilled by a lower A.
Basically, every point in the stack can be associated with a number of Is we have when resolving there. The topmost As and Bs are associated with zero, The next are associated with 1, all the way down to the bottom being associated with one fewer than the amount of input we started with.
Repeating this process the whole way down the stack takes a very long time, but eventually we use the very bottom A and don't have a B below it to get the I back to rebuild it, so we can't rebuild as many layers.
It's kind of dorky and terrible but I kind of think of the stack for a stage as a really tall cake, it has a bunch of alternating layers of cake and frosting. And eating the next bite causes everything that was in a layer above it to reappear and get bigger.
A Hyper stage uses some transition to separate stages. To continue the awful cake analogy, this is a skyscraper with a cake on every floor. We eat the top cake like normal, but then have to take the elevator to the next floor to use the top part of that cake to reform the cake on the topmost floor (with more layers!). The elevator needs to be limited by the height of the building, so we can't make space cake, and also needs to be able to go up and down floors and especially back to the top. But we need to construct the transition so we can't smuggle cake down through the elevator, or else we could take top cake and eat it as bottom cake (or even basement cake) and make more top cake and repeat forever.
Rereading that made me question if that could possibly be at all helpful, but it is at least humorous so I'm leaving it.
Anyway, in this deck the 'elevator' is the crazy EE/Goblin Dark Dwellers/Retract thing. but it is probably easier to look at in some of the earlier decks that don't use chalice of the void.
The further hyper-er stages are ways to stack skyscrapers and then somehow stack stacks of skyscrapers. Which is why these combos are so unstable.
As for your deck, I'm not gonna give it an accurate mathematical estimation, and it is probably not as powerful as the current lists are getting, but fresh ideas and combos are interesting, and are welcome.
In fact, your Saheeli + transform trick was one of my favorite interactions in the standard deck and I was very happy that it made it into the final version.
Deedlit: yeah green mana is just too convenient there. Well if we find a good way to transition off of red/black too there are options.
and we should probably keep things in one thread, even if this one is getting kinda long.
For the Chalice of the Void deck, I believe the current solution is Sephara, Sky's Blade + Maze Glider + Mirrorwing Dragon + Hunting Pack? Except that that doesn't work with Centaur Safeguard, so we have to switch that out I guess. The best that I can think of is one of our K'rrik setups, although perhaps there is something better with this deck design. Anyway, if the K'rrik setups work we have something like:
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 Moan of the Unhallowed
30 Collar the Culprit
31 Child of Alara
32 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
33 Aven Riftwatcher
34 Ramosian Commander
35 Sephara, Sky's Blade
36 Maze Glider
37 Spellweaver Helix
38 Worldfire
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Spider Spawning
42 Titania, Protector of Argoth
43 Multani's Decree
44 Mirrorwing Dragon
45 Hunting Pack
46 Bayou
47 Eureka
48 Elvish Spirit Guide
50 Grassland Crusader
51 Western Paladin
52 Frightshroud Courier
53 Havengul Runebinder
54 Ghosthelm Courier
55 Simian Spirit Guide
56 Goblin Kites
57 Old Man of the Sea
58 Karplusan Yeti
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reforge the Soul
which would get us about F_{w^4 + w6 + 1}(3) or thereabouts. We lose layers due to losing Thousand-Year Storm and Consecrated Sphinx, so it is a bit behind the Razorfin Abolisher deck at the moment.
I was hopeful that something could be done with Forerunner of Slaughter, perhaps using that with Metallurgeon and Cenn's Tactician? But I would like to hear what Stakfish has to say about it.
Forerunner looks tricky to use, a self targeting creature that doesn't tap seems very dangerous.
Forerunner of Slaughter just targets colorless creatures, so just artifacts and itself. So it's just a way to target artifacts for mana, allowing us to recover after Child of Alara or Worldfire hits.
But, that leaves us with the problem with how we are supposed to generate mana in the first place. Could replacing Karn by March of the Machines help? If we replace Phantatog with Allay, it will cost us three mana to recycle March of the Machines. So three mana for Allay and one for Forerunner of Slaughter, which we want to match with four mana from artifacts. Mana Vault can generate four mana by itself with the help of Mirrorworks, so that plus a Keyrune is too much. Maybe a Sol Ring and two Azorius Keyrunes? Then bouncing all three will generate us four mana, but it will cost us four mana to do so. But with Metallurgeon tokens, we can bounce for free, so we will gain an advantage in mana that way.
A possibly cheaper possibility is to use Mana Echoes; then to generate mana, a Metallurgeon can just bounce itself. We can have just Forerunner of Slaughter and a single Azorius Keyrune. But, then we can't have creature typed colorless artifacts, so no Myr Welder or Millikin. I don't know if that is a dealbreaker.
Allay+March of the machines doesn't work either as we can bounce march multiple times per allay thanks to Psychic Battles (and TYS if we can fit it in).
Edit: Metallurgeon needs to target a creature to for Cowardice to trigger. So I'm pretty sure we cant have Metallurgeon make mana but not Forerunner.
Maybe a colored artifact that makes mana? There was Midnight clock and The Great Henge in Throne of elkdrane, but those have other problems. There's also the cycle of borderposts which etb tapped. and would need Amulet of Vigor
Edittwo: Fieldmist Borderpost+amulet actually might work? Though being able to bounce the land causes other troubles. (and startup looks awful)
As for making mana, duplicating Amulet of Vigor with mimic vat (or more efficiently with mirrorworks), gets us more and more untaps per Metallurgeon psychic battle bounce. So I think we are ok there once we get going, (assuming we can get started).
Edit:
In terms of other mana rocks, one that looks interesting and doesn't go infinite with forerunner is Shrine of Boundless Growth, though again it doesnt really help with startup.
Actually, I guess in the Soul Foundry deck, Godtoucher can bounce Wormfang Behemoth to create Bloodbond March triggers. So we don't need Krosan Groundshaker, and we can go back to the K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth versions, to save two cards. So we can have 5 stages, along with Consecrated Sphinx.
Good spot with Godtoucher, crazy how close these three decks are.
Darksteel citadel and Wastes are other possible sources of colorless for the forerunner/borderpost deck, though it still seems hard to make them work.
Edit: Since we got rid of Verdant Succession in the Chalice of the Void deck, we can add Everglove Courier to the deck, adding another stage. We can then remove a two card stage (Ghosthelm Courier, say), and add Consecrated Sphinx back in.
With many Amulet of vigor we can look at ETB tapped permanents too. Orb of Dreams is probably too good? There are some interesting lands too.
Edit: after looking at all of the ETB tapped cards, there's actually not much that looks useful at all.
We actually don't need Vastwood Animist in the Chalice of the Void deck; Everglove Courier can just target Elvish Spirit Guide instead, I think. So we can also remove Consecrated Sphinx, and add a seventh stage back in.
One interesting note is the vivid lands, they can give us exactly 2 mana of any color and tons of mana of one color. But they don't seem to fit in at all.
We get another space with the forerunner+borderpost+amulet construction for restoring progress in 3 cards instead of 4. Actually even better because the borderpost replaces the keyrune too.
Oh and without maze glider we can go back to Centaur Safeguard + Verdant succession which is also smaller than the K'rrik setup. (though we do lose the efficient everglove courier stage for it)
So that's enough for another stage bringing us up to 8 or even 9(!?) stages again? Well ahead of the other decks.
I think its time to actually carefully step through how the chalice decks work, and make sure that we can do everything we think we can and can't do things we think we can't do.
Edit:and make sure we can get started because after an opening hand of ESG+land+crypt+eureka+omniscience+sphinx+sphinx we have 5 cards and no mana.
also since we can't have a basic i was looking at other green lands and can we possibly use pendlehaven as the land with vastwood animist to make it a 1/1 to target each other? I think it goes infinite?
Editedit:
I was writing out a long very mana tight line with all the extra cards we can draw, but then i remembered we have a mana crypt. It is much easier with bouncing our Mana crypt with recall a few times via goblin dark dwellers gives us enough mana to start profiting from mirrorworks copies of amulet and borderpost.
I think we will want to get Mirrorworks of Mirrorworks, but we might not be able to fit that draw in early.
editeditedit:
Oh wait this is assuming Metallurgeon which was incompatible with the chalice lines? Hmm. looks like it was a problem with Millikin?? is that even still an issue?
We can fix things if we eliminate blue mana, and use Academy Rector and Misery Charm to recover the Omniscience. So we get:
[spoiler]
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 Wildfield Borderpost
16 Amulet of Vigor
17 Skull of Orm
18 Metallurgeon
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Retract
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Cenn's Tactician
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Forerunner of Slaughter
35 Academy Rector
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Titania, Protector of Argoth
42 Multani's Decree
43 Scrubland
44 Mox Pearl
45 Misery Charm
46 Mana Crypt
47 Vastwood Animist
48 Grassland Crusader
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Havengul Runebinder
52 Ghosthelm Courier
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Sea Snidd
57 Reign of Chaos
58 Xathrid Gorgon
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reforge the Soul
Still seven stages, with no Consecrated Sphinx. Losing the efficient Elvish Spirit Guide / Everglove Courier / Grassland Crusader is somewhat costly, as is needing Academy Rector.
Sticking with K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, we can get maybe:
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 Fieldmist Borderpost
16 Amulet of Vigor
17 Skull of Orm
18 Metallurgeon
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Retract
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Cenn's Tactician
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Moan of the Unhallowed
30 Collar the Culprit
31 Child of Alara
32 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
33 Aven Riftwatcher
34 Ramosian Commander
35 Forerunner of Slaughter
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Acorn Harvest
39 Acorn Harvest
40 Acorn Harvest
41 Titania, Protector of Argoth
42 Multani's Decree
43 Bayou
44 Eureka
45 Mana Crypt
46 Elvish Spirit Guide
47 Everglove Courier
49 Western Paladin
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Havengul Runebinder
52 Ghosthelm Courier
53 Devout Chaplain
54 Royal Assassin
55 Simian Spirit Guide
56 Goblin Kites
57 Old Man of the Sea
58 Karplusan Yeti
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reforge the Soul
So eight stages, a little better. That's assuming the K'rrik transitions are okay in the Chalice of the Void deck, of course.
I dont see why the K'rrik transitions wouldn't work with chalice.
Though I think there might've been something with metallurgeon and millikin both being at 2 causing some conflict? I think Stakfish had something about that not actually being an issue?
Edit:
also we are spending a ton of mana on rebuilding, it's ok once we get going but that does take a while.
we make our mana from just two sources: mana crypt and Borderpost
Mana crypt makes us a flat 2 mana every time it gets bounced (just by recall)
WE dont start making a profit from mirrorworking borderpost until we have at least 3 amulets.
Making amulets costs 2 per mirrorworks and then 1 more to make it a creature and 1/(1+PBs) more to bounce the original to get more mirrorworks triggers. at the start we only have one each of mirrorworks and PB so a cost of 3.5x-5 mana.
It takes 4 amulets to properly start pulling ahead and that costs 9 mana to get setup, (sanity check we pay for mirrorworks 3 times, animate it twice with karn and activate forerunner once 3*2+2+1=9). The very first metallurgeon needs to be killed with EE=2(?) which costs another 4 mana, and then activating mimic vat is 3 more, and activating the token is another 1 so we will want to have at least 17 mana. That is at least 6 recalls before we can actually profit mana? seems a bit daunting to do it efficiently at the start.
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 Wildfield Borderpost
16 Amulet of Vigor
17 Skull of Orm
18 Metallurgeon
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Retract
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Cenn's Tactician
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Forerunner of Slaughter
35 Altar of the Lost
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Cenn's Enlistment
39 Cenn's Enlistment
40 Cenn's Enlistment
41 Realm Seekers
42 Titania, Protector of Argoth
43 Multani's Decree
44 Bayou
45 Eureka
46 Mana Crypt
47 Elvish Spirit Guide
48 Grassland Crusader
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Havengul Runebinder
52 Ghosthelm Courier
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Sea Snidd
57 Reign of Chaos
58 Xathrid Gorgon
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reforge the Soul
Or, the same number of stages as the old deck with Spider Spawning. I guess it is okay to use the same land for both Cenn's Enlistment and tapping for green mana? I don't see an obvious problem with that.
Yeah, Stakfish mentioned in his earlier description that it was important that Clockwork Gnomes have a different CMC than Millikan and Myr Welder, but then later he said that perhaps Millikin wasn't even needed, and could be replaced with something like Millstone. So perhaps it is okay; we have to investigate.
The start indeed looks very hard.
I think Panharmonicon has a problem with Changeling Hero. We can bounce Changeling Hero. Then, we can play and counter it, to get Bloodbond March triggers. We bring the Hero back to the battlefield, where it triggers multiple times thanks to Panharmonicon. We exile Goblin Dark-Dwellers with the first trigger. We sacrifice Changeling Hero with the second trigger. This brings the Dark-Dwellers back to the battlefield, where it triggers to cast our spells. Then Changeling Hero can be brought back to the battlefield with another Bloodbond March trigger.
This seems similar to the normal process, but the difference is that we can choose when to play the Changeling Hero, and subsequently trigger the ETB of Goblin Dark-Dwellers; this is different from the ETB triggering when we bounced Changeling Hero using a [c}Psychic Battle[/c] trigger. So we can prepare for the ETB trigger, doing things like putting a Mirrorworks trigger for Vedalken Orrery on the stack, for instance.
We could do the same thing with panharmonicon being in some of the Boggart mob lists?
It seems like if there is an issue it's probably when we champion more than just one card. (I think that was the problem with Lumbering Battlement?)
So yeah, it looks like Panharmonicon is a problem with bout the Changeling Hero and the Boggart Mob setups.
Another pseudo champion creature is Wormfang drake but flying/blue creature don't seem as easy to pick out as any creature type like Changeling hero.
Also, rather than retrace, I think we can use reduce // rubble? As it has cmc 6 in the graveyard. (Possibly even some that target on the front half? Actually no because with 3 copies of it we can imprint 2 on the spellweaver helix and get targeting when we cast the graveyard copy.) so driven // despair is the only other one that works.
Aftermath cards are also weird with spell queller only the front half gets cast from spell queller, even if the queller originally countered the aftermath half. Unfortunately, I don't think this observation is useful on any of the existing cards though.
With standard kinda being awful atm and my normal magic formats around me also being kinda stale/boring I’ve been finding myself pondering these max damage decks more and more. I do love the brewing challenge and I do really want to try to grasp the stage mechanics. I think in principal I understand it as a concept, but being able to convert an idea into the math is something I’m just not that good at. So knowing if I have something potent is tough for me to judge a lot of the time.
Anyway I have a 60 card list written up. I’m still working out exactly what order to do what in, but I have an fully written list. I’m reasonably sure I’ve avoided infinite’s as the same core mechanisms have been there from the start and I’ve done my best to vet the deck as I’ve incorporated new ideas/cards.
I don’t want to interrupt the great discussion you guys are working on, but I’d love some feedback on my ideas. Just figured I’d ask before posting a huge post that really isn’t super relevant to the stuff you guys are discussing currently.
Jkibbs
J_kibbs: Feel free to post your deck! I guess ideally, we would have multiple threads, so we could have one thread with the gigastage deck, and another with J_kibbs decks maybe; but it's probably not a good idea to create too many threads for this challenge.
As for explaining stage combos, I may be biased, but I think the one from the prerotation standard is easiest to understand. But in general they all work the same:
We have a fair amount of some input resource I (white mana, untapped hasty tokens, life, etc)
We can use one of them to put x copies of effect A on the stack. (in the vintage decks these are psychic battle triggers)
We can resolve an A to get x copies of effect B. (Bloodbond march triggers)
We can resolve A with a B below it to get one I back. (<- This step is what allows us to rebuild)
We can also resolve As and/or Bs to increase x (Psychic battle to bounce our artifacts to make mana to copy enchantments)
Optimally, using those rules is a little tricky, but we basically want to spend an I then resolve an A to make Bs until we run out of Is. This creates a stack that looks like AAAABBBBBAAAABBBBBAAAABBBBB. Once we have no Is we start resolving the very topmost layer of triggers and increasing x as we do. But once we get to the very last A in that topmost batch we can use the B below it to make an I, and make an entirely fresh top layer of As and Bs except now x is bigger and there's one fewer B in the second from the top layer of Bs.
Eventually those Bs will run out,but we can use an A from the layer below them to refill with even more Bs.
Once those As run low, the top of the stack looks like ...BBABA and we can resolve the top four elements to get two I and rebuild all the way to the same number of layers as before, but with in each layer being much bigger, but that used one of the lower Bs, which will eventually need to be refilled by a lower A.
Basically, every point in the stack can be associated with a number of Is we have when resolving there. The topmost As and Bs are associated with zero, The next are associated with 1, all the way down to the bottom being associated with one fewer than the amount of input we started with.
Repeating this process the whole way down the stack takes a very long time, but eventually we use the very bottom A and don't have a B below it to get the I back to rebuild it, so we can't rebuild as many layers.
It's kind of dorky and terrible but I kind of think of the stack for a stage as a really tall cake, it has a bunch of alternating layers of cake and frosting. And eating the next bite causes everything that was in a layer above it to reappear and get bigger.
A Hyper stage uses some transition to separate stages. To continue the awful cake analogy, this is a skyscraper with a cake on every floor. We eat the top cake like normal, but then have to take the elevator to the next floor to use the top part of that cake to reform the cake on the topmost floor (with more layers!). The elevator needs to be limited by the height of the building, so we can't make space cake, and also needs to be able to go up and down floors and especially back to the top. But we need to construct the transition so we can't smuggle cake down through the elevator, or else we could take top cake and eat it as bottom cake (or even basement cake) and make more top cake and repeat forever.
Rereading that made me question if that could possibly be at all helpful, but it is at least humorous so I'm leaving it.
Anyway, in this deck the 'elevator' is the crazy EE/Goblin Dark Dwellers/Retract thing. but it is probably easier to look at in some of the earlier decks that don't use chalice of the void.
The further hyper-er stages are ways to stack skyscrapers and then somehow stack stacks of skyscrapers. Which is why these combos are so unstable.
As for your deck, I'm not gonna give it an accurate mathematical estimation, and it is probably not as powerful as the current lists are getting, but fresh ideas and combos are interesting, and are welcome.
In fact, your Saheeli + transform trick was one of my favorite interactions in the standard deck and I was very happy that it made it into the final version.
Deedlit: yeah green mana is just too convenient there. Well if we find a good way to transition off of red/black too there are options.
and we should probably keep things in one thread, even if this one is getting kinda long.