The std deck was a huge inspiration to my current efforts. Even tho I kinda lost comprehension of what was happening when u guys were explaining the stage structures(with patience to the extreme btw, and thanks fwiw) I still kinda had an idea how most of it worked even if I couldn’t follow the math that identified it as a stage. I sorta understand it, tho I can’t wrap my head around the math of it. I’m hoping I broke through and finally did some stage things but I’m trying to be realistic about things. If nothing else it’s been fun designing and vetting the pile into something that kinda makes sense. I’ll try to get something posted soon enough.
Yeah, maybe the cakes in a skyscraper analogy is more silly than helpful.
Big numbers and powerful processes like this are hard to fully get a good intuition for because what we are doing has absolutely no correlation to anything we can do in the real world.
Its taken me months to feel like I have an 'ok' grasp of higher order stages and we still missed that panharmonicon infinite.
My nerdy feelings love this thread hahah.
I have searched for a deck like this, since I didn't find it I have a nice suggestion, probably not the most damage possible, I'm not sure how to do the math also haha, but it is based on my little EDH commander xD.
Didn't finish the deck still, but the idea is simple, put zada on the battlefield, draw your deck, generate mana, pump the team and do it like over 60 times, this would go infinite with Elixir of Immortality, so I left that out.
Start with:
Mox Ruby
Mana Crypt
Seething Song
Empty for 8 goblins
Ritual with the mana left for 8 red mana
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Target Zada with Fists of Flame, draw 9 cards
Use another ritual, Use some spells, Empty, another Fists of Flame, Platinum Angel to not lose to deck repeat to draw the whole deck, generate much more goblins, more mana, pump the team with Fists of Flame , which will give +53/0 for each creature in the first round, shuffle the whole gy back with a single Expedite in hand, draw the whole deck and give them haste, do it again and again... Fists start to give 100, 200, 300... for each creature
I think this can produce an absurd amount of damage, and non-infinite by the way, I hope someone finds this interesting also xD, Haze of Rage also makes absurd amounts of pump
A little guess here, I made an estimation that you would end up with something like 100k goblins, I think that s pretty close, the pumps are waaay harder to do it, because Haze would be cast like 100 times or more, and not all of them on the field until the last one. Its probably way over a billion damage already.
Welcome to the challenge Raizen, This looks like something I can give a reasonable approximation for. (your estimations seem low)
So the main limiting factor in that deck is the number of Feldon's Cane effects at 12.
Each time you recycle the deck you can cycle between making goblins with empty the warrens -> mana with brightstone ritual-> and more storm with haze of rage 4 times. The other card that matters in this cycle is Heat shimmer, for which I am going to be slightly suboptimal and cast one after each empty for elegant math. Each of these cycles almost neatly doubles the storm. As for each storm, Empty makes 2 goblins, heat shimmer makes it 4, which becomes enough mana to buyback haze of rage once. However there are also the old goblins to worry about, but those are easy to account for and in fact means that we increase according to the fibbonacci sequence twice per cycle. (Proving that is left as an exercise to the reader. MATH!)
We get to do that cycle 4*13=52 times, but we used some up in the start so lets say 50 times, or 100 fibbonacci numbers out past where we started with a storm of approximately 50 from playing the rest of the deck.
Plugging 50*(golden ratio)^100 into wolfram puts my approximation at about 3.96*10^22. Or 39,600,000,000,000,000,000,000.
That is the number of storm copies your last haze of rage gets, and also near-about how many hazes you have cast, and how many goblins you have. So a rough estimate for the final damage is to just cube that value to get something in the 6*10^67 range for the final total damage.
Probably more optimal usage of Heat shimmer get you to 10^75 or so. Not bad, especially considering that you are mono red.
Quick improvements to get you well past a google, assuming you want to stay mono red: Krenko, mob boss is another goblin doubler. Battle hymn is another ritual, along with Mana echoes gets you a bunch more mana for buyback. Mirrorworks lets you make more feldon's canes. Panharmonicon amplifies those
Precursor golem is a golem only version of Zada, but is much more powerful because each of the original precursors trigger to spread a spell to all of the golems, including other precursor golems.
Edit: Deedlit: I dont think we can get properly started in the current deck very efficiently at all. Getting 18 floating mana will be very tricky. Retract is only worth +3 mana, and is the only thing we can do for mana. we can cast it again with GDD, but then its exiled, and getting it back costs card draws/mana, and we rapidly run out of options for doing that cheaply.
I think we might need something like channel to get the initial colorless.
I think that estimate is a bit high, since each Haze of Rage before the last one gets exponentially fewer storm copies, and hits exponentially fewer Goblins. So you get a convergent geometric series, and the total damage is a small multiple of the last Haze of Rage. So maybe between 10^45 and 10^50?
Edit: Derp, I forgot that you get many Haze of Rage casts with each iteration, and each cast gets many copies. So yeah, more than 10^67.
Yeah cubing 4*10^22 was kind of a crude approximation, but I didn't really want to try to sum that series.
This does make me a little curious about a monocolor version of the challenge, or because artifacts are so good even a purely colorless deck could be pretty powerful.
Yeah I estimated sooo low HAHA.
Its actually 16 feldon's cane, maybe it gets a little higher with that. Thanks a lot FortyTwo for the input xD! I will try to finish this and make an estimation somehow.
I didn't get how Precursor golem effect is superior, but I will try to see a decklist with him that has been posted here. I mean, I guess with 4 of them for 4x triggers, I need to check how it works, thx!
Edit: I guess maybe Arcane Adaptation and swap mana crypt with black lotus to generate blue for it. Then swap the goblin ritual for Battle hymn, also putting your suggestions. I need to see how much damage the other decks got haha.
Oh right my bad, so that's an extra 16 cycles so 50*(golden ratio)^132 = 2*10^29 which when cubed gives 8*10^87. Optimal Heat shimmering might get you past a google.
Precursor golem is much better than 4x triggers. There's a good discussion of it starting at post 2019 on page 80. But here's the basics of how it works very well with Heat Shimmers.
Starting with just one precursor the first Heat Shimmer (always target a vanilla golem token) gives us 1 more precursor for a total of 2PGs, acting as normal. The second Heat shimmer triggers both the token and the original precursor's 'Zada' triggers, the first trigger resolves and makes some heat shimmers, doubling the number of golems we have to 4 PGs, then the second precursor's trigger resolves and doubles the golems again to 8PGs. The next Heat Shimmer triggers all 8 of them and each trigger doubles the number of PGs we have 8*2^8=2^11=2048. The 4th Heat Shimmer doubles the golems 2^11 times. Taking us to more than 2^(2^11) PGs. Which is a number with over 600 digits already.
As we cast more heat shimmers we keep doubling more and more, getting to 2^(2^(2^11)), then 2^(2^(2^(2^11))) and so on. creating a power tower of 2s as tall as however many times we can cast Heat Shimmer.
Deedlit:
Well if not a channel, I think a second Mana crypt will be enough to get us off the ground, ~4 retracts is a lot easier to get than 6 early. (and we can be +mana using a mirror of fate token to get it back from exile). Hmm, actually we are already at +1 mana from that cycle and can just draw it again? Spending Sphinx triggers like that seems kinda wasteful, but not as much as losing a card slot in the deck.
Oh right, the restricted list, Good thing we didn't want to use two of anything else restricted. (Cenn's enlistment seems probably safe from restriction ;))
We can bounce the sphinx with Collar the Culprit/Smite the Monstrous to get more draws. (and it can be exiled by spellweaver helix to get shuffled back with a Mirror token)
Kinda suboptimal but drawing retract+smite+??? from the sphinx lets us cast retract twice and be +4 mana after paying for the mirror token, we can do this loop a few times to get to enough mana for making a metallurgeon to be profitable.
We want those six cards to include Spellweaver Volute, and a sorcery, so that we can cast Collar the Culprit again. We can also include Retract for some early mana. How can we get Retract again? I suppose Goblin Dark Dwellers would do the trick. Then we have two cards left over... I suppose we could have Fieldmist Borderpost and Amulet of Vigor, to get two more mana. So the first draw can be Fieldmist Borderpost, Amulet of Vigor, and Retract. Then the second can be Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Spellweaver Volute, and a sorcery. We can have six mana left over afterwards.
The second casting of Collar the Culprit allows us two more triggers drawing three cards each. We want Collar the Culprit back, so we want to draw Mirror of Fate and Mirrorworks with the first draw trigger. We draw one more card, which I will leave unspecified for now. We spend two mana to create a token of Mirror of Fate, and sacrifice it to place Elvish Spirit Guide, Retract, and Collar the Culprit back into the library. We draw them, and can gain four more mana, putting us back up to 8 mana. Collar the Culprit bounces Sphinx of Enlightenment twice, allowing us to draw 6 more cards.
We now have Collar the Culprit back in the graveyard, so we need to recycle it somehow. We can use Skull of Orm to get Spellweaver Volute back, for a whopping five mana. (yikes!) We still have six cards to choose - we would like to get more copies of Psychic Battle, so we don't need as much overhead to recycle Sphinx of Enligtenment. So maybe Phantatog and Mimic Vault, and then we can redraw Psychic Battle along with Collar the Culprit and Elvish Spirit Guide, after sacrificing a Mirror of Fate token. Hmm, but that will cost us 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 mana - we first need to generate more mana first.
Anyway, it seems like we can loop Collar the Culprit for a while, drawing 6 cards at a time, and more later. So it does seem like this can work.
I was thinking we want to bounce goblin dark dwellers and Sphinx with our two triggers from Collar the culprit.
Goblin dark dwellers casts retract, for +3 mana. and spellweaver helix exiles Collar the culprit. (this is much cheaper than recycling spellweaver vollute at this point)
Then we make a mirror token (-2 mana) and reshuffle Retract, collar, and elvish spirit guide(I guess?) to be drawn with the sphinx.
Retract and ESG gives us +4 more mana, so the whole cycle is +5 mana at the cost of our opponent drawing a card.
Doing this 4 times looks like enough to start profiting off of Amulet/forerunner/borderpost.
Hmm, can we use shriekhorn for the millstone? that way we don't need to redraw Collar the Culprit, and can draw retract, spellweaver volute, sorcery. And be +4 mana each cycle?
And you are right, we want to draw collar if we can, we dont want to mill it. Also I was thinking we exiled spellweaver vollute somehow, which we can't do.
So a cycle something like:
Draw Retract, CtC, (Elvish Spirit guide?)
Bounce GDD+Sphinx
Retract, GDD, Retract, make an extra mirror of fate (+4 mana) {5 with the spirit guide}
Mirror back Retract (and the spirit guide)
play sphinx
Draw Retract+Sorcery+{elvish spirit guide?}
Retract and make an extra crystal chimes (+5 mana so far)
crystal chimes back spellweaver vollute (+2 mana)
enchant CtC, cast the sorcery to bounce GDD+Sphinx. Volute is enchanting nothing and dies.
GDD retract and make an extra mirror (+3 mana) {+5 with both Elf draws}
Spellweaver helix exiles the sorcery. (possibly we start using flashback Acorn harvest to save on card draws, but that costs 2 mana too)
Mirror back the retract, CtC, sorcery, and the elf
Repeat
Doing this 4 times gets us to 20 floating mana, which I think is enough to start profiting from Forerunner+metallurgeon.
Edit:
We probably need to do another iteration to draw the cards we need to.
I don't know if we want to being making enchantments before we start making mana? We are already sacrificing crystal chimes so they only cost the 3 mana to tap Mimic Vat. More Psychic Battles makes making mana more efficient.
Yeah, making more Psychic Battles is probably a good call. It will probably take a bunch of experimenting to find the right balance between card draws, mana, and battlefield resources.
Well, further optimizing the start is less important than verifying that it works at all. Which it looks like we can get going pretty well.Even if we have to do that loop 20 times, to get started the opponent will still have about a dozen cards to draw. which is more than enough time to catch up to any of the other decks.
We have been putting off analyzing the chalice tricks in the stage and transitions for a while, and i think it is finally time to dive into it. Here is a rough overview of the current strategy:
Much like previous decks, at the very top of the stack we are mainly spending mana to copy colorless cmc>0 artifacts and non-aura enchantments using the following processes:
Artifacts:
If the artifact is not already a creature, spend 1 to make it a creature with Karn, Silver golem. Then pay 1 to target it with Forerunner of Slaughter (This also makes PB triggers, so this cost is more like 1/#PBs) This causes Cowardice to bounce it to our hand.
Replaying it gives Mirrorworks triggers, so we can pay 2 to make a copy for each mirrorworks we have. [side note:Maybe just one mirrorworks? it costs a card draw to copy it with Mimic Vat then redraw it, and extras are convenient but probably not necessary]
Average Cost:1/(#mirrorworks)+1/(1+#PB)+2 which is >2 and <4 so lets approximate it to 3.
Enchantments:
With Opalescence in play, we can sacrifice an enchantment to Phantatog and imprint it on a Mimic Vat, we then tap mimic vat for 3 to make a token copy of the enchantment. Next we sacrifice a Mirror of fate token to shuffle the enchantment into the deck, mill it with Shriekhorn and use a Crystal Chimes to return it to hand.
Average Cost:3+(artifact's cost)+(3*(artifact's cost)+3)/2 because we can double up on the last three artifacts to also make a copy of another enchantment, We only really need tons of Bloodbond Marches and Psychic Battles.
So the cost is >9 and <15 which we can call ~12
We make all this mana with Fieldmist Borderpost+Amulet of vigor. Given a sufficient initial investment of copies of amulet, we reap quadratic mana from bouncing/copying the Borderpost.
But, the Borderpost is not colorless so we can't target it with the Forerunner, instead we need to target it with Metallurgeon.
We make need hasty copies of Metallurgeon from Mimic Vat, but to get it on the vat we need to kill a metallurgeon.
Which we do in the following way: Cast metallurgeon into chalice of the void = 2 and get Bloodbond March triggers. use one to reanimate the little guy. Then use Engineered explosives on 2 to kill it and imprint on a vat. Tap the vat for a token and then either re-imprint the mimic vat with another card, or use a mirror of fate and shriekhorn to move the card from exile to the graveyard, where the next Bloodbond march trigger can pick it up.
Now the hasty token has a cardboard buddy to target and either bounce with cowardice or kill with horobi, death's wail.
And we also finally have something that can target the Borderpost to bounce it and make a bunch of mana, and a bunch more artifacts/enchantments.
We use the last PB trigger from the token to kill the original, make another token, and then return it with the next bloodbond march trigger from the original casting.
So far this is all basically the same as the non chalice decks, but this time, instead of battlecry to reuse all of those hasty metallurgeons, there's some crazy Muzzio, Visionary Architect and goryo's vengence thing, which is blocked by chalice=2.
The Muzzio Monstrosity is explained in stakfish's post #1871 here, In short, it allows us to profit hasty metallurgeon tokens. This is the process I am most concerned about having broken with our changes.
That process is limited by Changeling Hero, and the only thing we can target that with is Cenn's Tactician, which conflicts with retract and forces us to change chalice more. This is another nebulous process to me and again is something we need to be careful with.
Another way to target Changeling hero is Smite the Monstrous, (or Collar the Culprit depending on which way works better)
That spell gets cast from spellweaver vollute, and the cheapest sorcery we have to trigger that is Acorn harvest which costs 3 life to flash back. (Or a K'rrik setup)
To get that life back we need to hit Child of alara with the spell and kill then otherwise unkillable Centaur Safeguard (or a different creature for K'rrik). We can rebuild using our floating mana
We get that land back through that cycle by exiling it with worldfire, also cast from the Spellweaver helix. Again we rebuild using our floating mana
And then the rest of the deck is a chain of creatures that target each other, all culminating in a way to bounce the land more.
Eventually we are limited by the number of cards in our opponent's deck and can make a ton of 10/10 hasty Omniscience tokens and attack.
Edit: I know it does not matter, but it is more mana efficient to make Mirror of Fates
Sorry I haven't replied in a while, I am trying to make time at some point to really look through all the Chalice of the Void interactions. If it works, it would be our best deck, so I guess it should be our priority at the moment.
Yeah, I have about half of a big post about the first part of the stages written up, but the options and restrictions and possible setups make it hard to tell if things work. Currently I'm mostly struggling with the Muzzio activations to rebuild our Metallurgeon counts. I think there may be some problems, but I'm not sure.
It's awkward because of having to keep track of flash and when we gain/lose it or any other tricks we can do.
edit:
A few other notes about the start: In order for the BBM/PB combos to be powerful, we need to start with 2 of each of the enchantments? Thankfully, I think we can start profiting mana before then, and making the enchantments won't cost the naive ~25 mana that would require ~5 more cycles of making mana via card draw.
Also, because of that, we definitely do want to be able to have mirrorworks of mirrorworks, as it will end up saving us card draw cycles, even if the setup is kind of expensive: Spend 1 to make it a creature, 1 to kill it with forerunner, 3 to make a Mimic vat token, 2 for the Mirror of fate token, for a total of 7 mana and a card draw. (it's really only 5 because we would make a mirror anyway)
Hmm, but aren't we making mana via Retract, which will get rid of the Mirrorworks token?
To create a stage, we would need at least two Bloodbond March[c/]es, and at least one Psychic Battle. (With one Psychic Battle, we would get two uses of Cowardice / Horobi; one from the Psychic Battle, one from the original ability.) But that would just create a stage with groups of single abilities, which wouldn't gain too much. So better to start with either at least 3 BMs and 1 PB, or at least 2 BMs and 2 PBs, I guess.
We can leave a mirrorworks trigger for mirrorworks on the stack, so we only have to draw it once. It is worth it because mirrorworks works on both the amulet and the borderpost, the returns start piling up pretty fast, having just one token we paid for after a recall, we can pay 2 to make another, then 2 more to bounce and replaying the original, and paying 4 for the triggers brings us up to five from just 10 Mana, 10 more lets us make 6 amulets, and now borderpost copies are each +4 Mana, 4*5+6=26 then minus 2 to reset the mirrorworks is still a profit from 20 invested mana, and we can get even more mirrorworks after the next recall.
25~30 Mana was the tipping point, and having to copy enchantments brings us clear over that threshold.
Big numbers and powerful processes like this are hard to fully get a good intuition for because what we are doing has absolutely no correlation to anything we can do in the real world.
Its taken me months to feel like I have an 'ok' grasp of higher order stages and we still missed that panharmonicon infinite.
I have searched for a deck like this, since I didn't find it I have a nice suggestion, probably not the most damage possible, I'm not sure how to do the math also haha, but it is based on my little EDH commander xD.
Didn't finish the deck still, but the idea is simple, put zada on the battlefield, draw your deck, generate mana, pump the team and do it like over 60 times, this would go infinite with Elixir of Immortality, so I left that out.
How it goes, opening hand:
Zada, Hedron Grinder Mox Ruby Mana Crypt Seething Song Empty the Warrens Fists of Flame Brightstone Ritual
Start with:
Mox Ruby
Mana Crypt
Seething Song
Empty for 8 goblins
Ritual with the mana left for 8 red mana
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Target Zada with Fists of Flame, draw 9 cards
Use another ritual, Use some spells, Empty, another Fists of Flame, Platinum Angel to not lose to deck repeat to draw the whole deck, generate much more goblins, more mana, pump the team with Fists of Flame , which will give +53/0 for each creature in the first round, shuffle the whole gy back with a single Expedite in hand, draw the whole deck and give them haste, do it again and again... Fists start to give 100, 200, 300... for each creature
I think this can produce an absurd amount of damage, and non-infinite by the way, I hope someone finds this interesting also xD, Haze of Rage also makes absurd amounts of pump
A little guess here, I made an estimation that you would end up with something like 100k goblins, I think that s pretty close, the pumps are waaay harder to do it, because Haze would be cast like 100 times or more, and not all of them on the field until the last one. Its probably way over a billion damage already.
Unfinished still
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mana Crypt
1 Seething Song
4 Empty the Warrens
1 Platinum Angel
4 Brightstone Ritual
4 Fists of Flame
4 Feldon's Cane
4 Heat Shimmer
4 Cranial Archive
4 Thran Foundry
4 Perpetual Timepiece
4 Haze of Rage
1 Expedite
So the main limiting factor in that deck is the number of Feldon's Cane effects at 12.
Each time you recycle the deck you can cycle between making goblins with empty the warrens -> mana with brightstone ritual-> and more storm with haze of rage 4 times. The other card that matters in this cycle is Heat shimmer, for which I am going to be slightly suboptimal and cast one after each empty for elegant math. Each of these cycles almost neatly doubles the storm. As for each storm, Empty makes 2 goblins, heat shimmer makes it 4, which becomes enough mana to buyback haze of rage once. However there are also the old goblins to worry about, but those are easy to account for and in fact means that we increase according to the fibbonacci sequence twice per cycle. (Proving that is left as an exercise to the reader. MATH!)
We get to do that cycle 4*13=52 times, but we used some up in the start so lets say 50 times, or 100 fibbonacci numbers out past where we started with a storm of approximately 50 from playing the rest of the deck.
Plugging 50*(golden ratio)^100 into wolfram puts my approximation at about 3.96*10^22. Or 39,600,000,000,000,000,000,000.
That is the number of storm copies your last haze of rage gets, and also near-about how many hazes you have cast, and how many goblins you have. So a rough estimate for the final damage is to just cube that value to get something in the 6*10^67 range for the final total damage.
Probably more optimal usage of Heat shimmer get you to 10^75 or so. Not bad, especially considering that you are mono red.
Quick improvements to get you well past a google, assuming you want to stay mono red:
Krenko, mob boss is another goblin doubler.
Battle hymn is another ritual, along with
Mana echoes gets you a bunch more mana for buyback.
Mirrorworks lets you make more feldon's canes.
Panharmonicon amplifies those
Precursor golem is a golem only version of Zada, but is much more powerful because each of the original precursors trigger to spread a spell to all of the golems, including other precursor golems.
Edit: Deedlit: I dont think we can get properly started in the current deck very efficiently at all. Getting 18 floating mana will be very tricky. Retract is only worth +3 mana, and is the only thing we can do for mana. we can cast it again with GDD, but then its exiled, and getting it back costs card draws/mana, and we rapidly run out of options for doing that cheaply.
I think we might need something like channel to get the initial colorless.
Edit: Derp, I forgot that you get many Haze of Rage casts with each iteration, and each cast gets many copies. So yeah, more than 10^67.
This does make me a little curious about a monocolor version of the challenge, or because artifacts are so good even a purely colorless deck could be pretty powerful.
Its actually 16 feldon's cane, maybe it gets a little higher with that. Thanks a lot FortyTwo for the input xD! I will try to finish this and make an estimation somehow.
I didn't get how Precursor golem effect is superior, but I will try to see a decklist with him that has been posted here. I mean, I guess with 4 of them for 4x triggers, I need to check how it works, thx!
Edit: I guess maybe Arcane Adaptation and swap mana crypt with black lotus to generate blue for it. Then swap the goblin ritual for Battle hymn, also putting your suggestions. I need to see how much damage the other decks got haha.
Precursor golem is much better than 4x triggers. There's a good discussion of it starting at post 2019 on page 80. But here's the basics of how it works very well with Heat Shimmers.
Starting with just one precursor the first Heat Shimmer (always target a vanilla golem token) gives us 1 more precursor for a total of 2PGs, acting as normal. The second Heat shimmer triggers both the token and the original precursor's 'Zada' triggers, the first trigger resolves and makes some heat shimmers, doubling the number of golems we have to 4 PGs, then the second precursor's trigger resolves and doubles the golems again to 8PGs. The next Heat Shimmer triggers all 8 of them and each trigger doubles the number of PGs we have 8*2^8=2^11=2048. The 4th Heat Shimmer doubles the golems 2^11 times. Taking us to more than 2^(2^11) PGs. Which is a number with over 600 digits already.
As we cast more heat shimmers we keep doubling more and more, getting to 2^(2^(2^11)), then 2^(2^(2^(2^11))) and so on. creating a power tower of 2s as tall as however many times we can cast Heat Shimmer.
Deedlit:
Well if not a channel, I think a second Mana crypt will be enough to get us off the ground, ~4 retracts is a lot easier to get than 6 early. (and we can be +mana using a mirror of fate token to get it back from exile). Hmm, actually we are already at +1 mana from that cycle and can just draw it again? Spending Sphinx triggers like that seems kinda wasteful, but not as much as losing a card slot in the deck.
Can we really get going with Enlightened Sphinx? How are we recycling it?
We can bounce the sphinx with Collar the Culprit/Smite the Monstrous to get more draws. (and it can be exiled by spellweaver helix to get shuffled back with a Mirror token)
Kinda suboptimal but drawing retract+smite+??? from the sphinx lets us cast retract twice and be +4 mana after paying for the mirror token, we can do this loop a few times to get to enough mana for making a metallurgeon to be profitable.
We want those six cards to include Spellweaver Volute, and a sorcery, so that we can cast Collar the Culprit again. We can also include Retract for some early mana. How can we get Retract again? I suppose Goblin Dark Dwellers would do the trick. Then we have two cards left over... I suppose we could have Fieldmist Borderpost and Amulet of Vigor, to get two more mana. So the first draw can be Fieldmist Borderpost, Amulet of Vigor, and Retract. Then the second can be Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Spellweaver Volute, and a sorcery. We can have six mana left over afterwards.
The second casting of Collar the Culprit allows us two more triggers drawing three cards each. We want Collar the Culprit back, so we want to draw Mirror of Fate and Mirrorworks with the first draw trigger. We draw one more card, which I will leave unspecified for now. We spend two mana to create a token of Mirror of Fate, and sacrifice it to place Elvish Spirit Guide, Retract, and Collar the Culprit back into the library. We draw them, and can gain four more mana, putting us back up to 8 mana. Collar the Culprit bounces Sphinx of Enlightenment twice, allowing us to draw 6 more cards.
We now have Collar the Culprit back in the graveyard, so we need to recycle it somehow. We can use Skull of Orm to get Spellweaver Volute back, for a whopping five mana. (yikes!) We still have six cards to choose - we would like to get more copies of Psychic Battle, so we don't need as much overhead to recycle Sphinx of Enligtenment. So maybe Phantatog and Mimic Vault, and then we can redraw Psychic Battle along with Collar the Culprit and Elvish Spirit Guide, after sacrificing a Mirror of Fate token. Hmm, but that will cost us 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 mana - we first need to generate more mana first.
Anyway, it seems like we can loop Collar the Culprit for a while, drawing 6 cards at a time, and more later. So it does seem like this can work.
Goblin dark dwellers casts retract, for +3 mana. and spellweaver helix exiles Collar the culprit. (this is much cheaper than recycling spellweaver vollute at this point)
Then we make a mirror token (-2 mana) and reshuffle Retract, collar, and elvish spirit guide(I guess?) to be drawn with the sphinx.
Retract and ESG gives us +4 more mana, so the whole cycle is +5 mana at the cost of our opponent drawing a card.
Doing this 4 times looks like enough to start profiting off of Amulet/forerunner/borderpost.
We'd probably need to redraw spellweaver volute, as even 2+3 mana for crystal chimes seems like too much.
Hmm, can we use shriekhorn for the millstone? that way we don't need to redraw Collar the Culprit, and can draw retract, spellweaver volute, sorcery. And be +4 mana each cycle?
Redrawing Collar the Culprit seems nice though, we can bounce Sphinx of Enlightenment (and possibly Goblin Dark-Dwellers) at the cost of just one card draw.
And you are right, we want to draw collar if we can, we dont want to mill it. Also I was thinking we exiled spellweaver vollute somehow, which we can't do.
So a cycle something like:
Draw Retract, CtC, (Elvish Spirit guide?)
Bounce GDD+Sphinx
Retract, GDD, Retract, make an extra mirror of fate (+4 mana) {5 with the spirit guide}
Mirror back Retract (and the spirit guide)
play sphinx
Draw Retract+Sorcery+{elvish spirit guide?}
Retract and make an extra crystal chimes (+5 mana so far)
crystal chimes back spellweaver vollute (+2 mana)
enchant CtC, cast the sorcery to bounce GDD+Sphinx. Volute is enchanting nothing and dies.
GDD retract and make an extra mirror (+3 mana) {+5 with both Elf draws}
Spellweaver helix exiles the sorcery. (possibly we start using flashback Acorn harvest to save on card draws, but that costs 2 mana too)
Mirror back the retract, CtC, sorcery, and the elf
Repeat
Doing this 4 times gets us to 20 floating mana, which I think is enough to start profiting from Forerunner+metallurgeon.
Edit:
We probably need to do another iteration to draw the cards we need to.
I don't know if we want to being making enchantments before we start making mana? We are already sacrificing crystal chimes so they only cost the 3 mana to tap Mimic Vat. More Psychic Battles makes making mana more efficient.
We have been putting off analyzing the chalice tricks in the stage and transitions for a while, and i think it is finally time to dive into it. Here is a rough overview of the current strategy:
Much like previous decks, at the very top of the stack we are mainly spending mana to copy colorless cmc>0 artifacts and non-aura enchantments using the following processes:
Artifacts:
If the artifact is not already a creature, spend 1 to make it a creature with Karn, Silver golem. Then pay 1 to target it with Forerunner of Slaughter (This also makes PB triggers, so this cost is more like 1/#PBs) This causes Cowardice to bounce it to our hand.
Replaying it gives Mirrorworks triggers, so we can pay 2 to make a copy for each mirrorworks we have. [side note:Maybe just one mirrorworks? it costs a card draw to copy it with Mimic Vat then redraw it, and extras are convenient but probably not necessary]
Average Cost:1/(#mirrorworks)+1/(1+#PB)+2 which is >2 and <4 so lets approximate it to 3.
Enchantments:
With Opalescence in play, we can sacrifice an enchantment to Phantatog and imprint it on a Mimic Vat, we then tap mimic vat for 3 to make a token copy of the enchantment. Next we sacrifice a Mirror of fate token to shuffle the enchantment into the deck, mill it with Shriekhorn and use a Crystal Chimes to return it to hand.
Average Cost:3+(artifact's cost)+(3*(artifact's cost)+3)/2 because we can double up on the last three artifacts to also make a copy of another enchantment, We only really need tons of Bloodbond Marches and Psychic Battles.
So the cost is >9 and <15 which we can call ~12
We make all this mana with Fieldmist Borderpost+Amulet of vigor. Given a sufficient initial investment of copies of amulet, we reap quadratic mana from bouncing/copying the Borderpost.
But, the Borderpost is not colorless so we can't target it with the Forerunner, instead we need to target it with Metallurgeon.
We make need hasty copies of Metallurgeon from Mimic Vat, but to get it on the vat we need to kill a metallurgeon.
Which we do in the following way: Cast metallurgeon into chalice of the void = 2 and get Bloodbond March triggers. use one to reanimate the little guy. Then use Engineered explosives on 2 to kill it and imprint on a vat. Tap the vat for a token and then either re-imprint the mimic vat with another card, or use a mirror of fate and shriekhorn to move the card from exile to the graveyard, where the next Bloodbond march trigger can pick it up.
Now the hasty token has a cardboard buddy to target and either bounce with cowardice or kill with horobi, death's wail.
And we also finally have something that can target the Borderpost to bounce it and make a bunch of mana, and a bunch more artifacts/enchantments.
We use the last PB trigger from the token to kill the original, make another token, and then return it with the next bloodbond march trigger from the original casting.
So far this is all basically the same as the non chalice decks, but this time, instead of battlecry to reuse all of those hasty metallurgeons, there's some crazy Muzzio, Visionary Architect and goryo's vengence thing, which is blocked by chalice=2.
The Muzzio Monstrosity is explained in stakfish's post #1871 here, In short, it allows us to profit hasty metallurgeon tokens. This is the process I am most concerned about having broken with our changes.
That process is limited by Changeling Hero, and the only thing we can target that with is Cenn's Tactician, which conflicts with retract and forces us to change chalice more. This is another nebulous process to me and again is something we need to be careful with.
Another way to target Changeling hero is Smite the Monstrous, (or Collar the Culprit depending on which way works better)
That spell gets cast from spellweaver vollute, and the cheapest sorcery we have to trigger that is Acorn harvest which costs 3 life to flash back. (Or a K'rrik setup)
To get that life back we need to hit Child of alara with the spell and kill then otherwise unkillable Centaur Safeguard (or a different creature for K'rrik). We can rebuild using our floating mana
To gain life we are using Divine Congregation (which seems better than the Multani's Decree in the list right now) which we can only recast by using the retrace from cenn's enlistment, combined with Spellweaver Helix, but that needs a land in hand, which we can fetch with Realm Seekers, but that needs green so we discard the land to Phantatog and play Titania, Protector of Argoth to get it in play.
We get that land back through that cycle by exiling it with worldfire, also cast from the Spellweaver helix. Again we rebuild using our floating mana
And then the rest of the deck is a chain of creatures that target each other, all culminating in a way to bounce the land more.
Eventually we are limited by the number of cards in our opponent's deck and can make a ton of 10/10 hasty Omniscience tokens and attack.
Edit: I know it does not matter, but it is more mana efficient to make Mirror of Fates
It's awkward because of having to keep track of flash and when we gain/lose it or any other tricks we can do.
edit:
A few other notes about the start: In order for the BBM/PB combos to be powerful, we need to start with 2 of each of the enchantments? Thankfully, I think we can start profiting mana before then, and making the enchantments won't cost the naive ~25 mana that would require ~5 more cycles of making mana via card draw.
Also, because of that, we definitely do want to be able to have mirrorworks of mirrorworks, as it will end up saving us card draw cycles, even if the setup is kind of expensive: Spend 1 to make it a creature, 1 to kill it with forerunner, 3 to make a Mimic vat token, 2 for the Mirror of fate token, for a total of 7 mana and a card draw. (it's really only 5 because we would make a mirror anyway)
To create a stage, we would need at least two Bloodbond March[c/]es, and at least one Psychic Battle. (With one Psychic Battle, we would get two uses of Cowardice / Horobi; one from the Psychic Battle, one from the original ability.) But that would just create a stage with groups of single abilities, which wouldn't gain too much. So better to start with either at least 3 BMs and 1 PB, or at least 2 BMs and 2 PBs, I guess.
25~30 Mana was the tipping point, and having to copy enchantments brings us clear over that threshold.
oh and by recall and rebuild we mean retract to conflict with Cenn's Tactician