Hmm, I think I looked into phasing before.
Phasing needs exactly Vision Charm and Time and Tide? Both of which can be cast with Goblin Dark Dwellers.
But, that lets us smuggle untapped metallurgeon tokens down the stack and go infinite.
Good news! Turns out I was completely wrong, and with Thousand-Year Storm, we can still save the progress through the megastage with no changes.
If we make sure to create a token copy of Mirrorworks after the megastage transition and rebuy the nontoken (none of which is too expensive at that point), we can use the first Thousand-Year Storm trigger copying Smite the Monstrous to repeatedly bounce and replay the nontoken Mirrorworks, using the triggers from the tokens to make more copies until we have N Mirrorworks. Then, every time we replay our artifacts at the top level, we'll get a number of token copies equal to our storm count, and our progress is saved. The same thing works in the gigastage, too.
So now our only problem is finding a way to stop ourselves from casting Goryo's Vengeance in the middle of the hyperstage transition, or of using up a Muzzio, Visionary Architect activation after the second Hurkyl's Recall but before we enter the next transition.
Edit: it doesn't fix the problems itself, but the Select for Inspection tech should let us shave a card off. It doesn't just replace the second Muzzio, it also replaces Royal Assassin all the way at the bottom of the stack: we can have Devout Chaplain and Select for Inspection work in a stage the same way Sea Snidd and Reign of Chaos do. The prospective list was 61 cards before, so that at least helps a bit.
Oh, very convenient that Mirrorworks gets big enough for that! We do need to be careful to keep mirrorworks triggers for mirrorworks on the stack, as it does require redrawing it to get the first trigger.
Select for Inspection(/Summary Judgment) combos with Muzzio and Goryo's vengeance kinda powerfully. It lets us get many muzzio activations if Chalice gets set to three. As we can cast Muzzio into Chalice=3 and counter it, Get a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers each of which return it into play, Legend rule it onto a vat, make a token, activate it, Mirror it off of vat, mill it, then gets returned again with the next bloodbond march trigger. (Still needs Goryo's vengeance to make the initial tapped muzzio)
Concerning shaving cards, it would be nice if we could change to a K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth version, or otherwise make it so that the gigastage resource was green mana, so that we could use the Elvish Spirit Guide / Everglove Courier / Grassland Crusader tech. But with needing our life creature to trigger on dying limits our options.
The problem with Chalice of the Void being set to 3 is usually that at that count, it counters Mimic Vat, so you have to frontload all your Vats. It also means we can't layer in Bloodbond March triggers for Clockwork Gnomes, though if for some reason we wanted to we could always switch back to Rust Tick and find some other way to save Mimic Vat (that won't break the 3-drop stages at the top, of course). Mishra, Artificer Prodigy would do the trick.
I've been thinking about ways we could make Goryo's Vengeance harder to cast mid-transition. The only approach I've found to be promising is to make it hard to get Vengeance BACK into the graveyard after casting it. That way, if we do cast it, that closes off the option to use it later and we would fizzle out instead of going infinite. Getting it into the graveyard from the stack right now is a 3-step process: we let it resolve and go into exile, use Mirror of Fate to bring it from exile to the library, then use a Millikin to bring it from the library to the graveyard.
I've found some potential lines sans Mirror of Fate, where we can only use Wheel of Sun and Moon to circumvent the exile and then mill the spell, but then we have to find another way to free cards from under Mimic Vat and Spellweaver Helix. I haven't found much by replacing Millikin... I guess we could also find some bizarre way to force us to activate Muzzio AFTER the second Hurkyl's Recall resolves but I don't see how an activation at that point would be any different from an activation even later on.
One last note: slivers and green creatures are both off-limits for the hyperstage. Green creatures are too easily fetched with Verdant Succession, and slivers will also give the ability to the Changeling.
Vat only needs to be on three briefly for that to happen, and we'd need to resolve down to a retract/rebuild/recall to get vat back on whatever value we wanted.
Its a possible line to be wary of for infinites, but seems safe and on the net less efficient than just using a Goryo's vengeance for an activation, without having to mess around with chalice.
Yeah, slivers look dangerous but at least the real changeling hero doesn't have haste so the line is more complicated. (especially with chalice)
A Sliver that can tap to target Slivers goes infinite with any other Sliver (including Changeling Hero), as we will have two nontoken creatures that each can tap to destroy/bounce both of them. So generally speaking, we haven't been able to make Slivers work in any of our decks, due to needing another Sliver to transition to something else. (We did have a copy of Crypt Sliver or Magma Sliver in a hyperstage deck, coupled with Chrome Mox to generate mana of the appropriate color.)
As for replacing Mirror of Fate - could Riftsweeper work? To reuse Riftsweeper, we would have to Champion it with Changeling Hero, then bounce the Hero. So that will break up the usages of Goryo's Vengeance. I'm not whether that fixes things or not. Also, we would have the problem of figuring out how to get Clockwork Gnomes back after it is exiled.
But bouncing both slivers alone isn't enough to go infinite, we also need to be able to counter them. which we can only do by setting chalice on different values which requires a rebuild/retract. but, that is linked to one of our slivers so it looks like it will go infinite. Maybe if the slivers were above whatever rest chalice? But there's not really room for that... Oh well.
Riftsweeper seems hard to make work, we need to get things back from exile pretty regularly, mimic vat can help by re-imprinting and put something back that way, but I don't think that's enough.
bouncing Changeling Hero seems frequent enough for everything except Clockwork Gnomes (or whatever our stage srtifact creature turns out to be), unless I am missing something. And that would be something we need to sort out. Since we are imprinting it on Mimic Vat, we can put the artifact creature back in the graveyard by imprinting something else - presumably something that we can get back from exile. Misthollow Griffin seems like an obvious candidate, since it requires blue mana to cast. We would have to find a way to destroy it cheaply enough though; perhaps something targeting flying creatures? Other options like Nosferatu Sengir and Squee, the Immortal cost the wrong kind of mana.
Yeah a cast from exile creature like misthollow Griffin or Eternal Scourge seem like enough to replace the mirror, Though it would need a way to get manipulated.
hey guys just gonna post what i have so far on my primer. i'm still checking a few numbers on the last 1/2 or so of the deck and making sure things can work the way i wanted them to. i'm hoping now that i've gotten this down that the rest will be easy enough to get written. i'm hoping to have it fully written and posted before 2020 gets here.
max damage 2019
operations breakdown: most powerful/rarest -> least powerful/most common
1) making blue mana
2) using life to draw cards
2.5) our artifact resets
3) making white mana
4) making green mana
5) making black mana
6) making red mana
1+2) these are our reshuffling operations. this will allow us to replay everything again many many times.
2.5) these are our artifact resets. they come in 2 varieties: single target and also fully resetting everything artifact and then rebuilding from there.
3) all of our white mana comes exclusively from artifact sources. once we have used all of these resources up we will need to move to a point on the stack where we can access an artifact reset. while these are pretty rare we do have some ability to extend these reset actions more than it might seem. our strongest use of white mana is to use it to make 1 white(or even less) mana into many many green mana. generally as we move from a lower number in the hierarchy into a higher one we will be doing it with triggers on the stack to make more of the lower resource. our strongest non artifact updating comes during the use of our black mana and these updates will ripple back down the chain and definitely effect the potency of the triggers happening in the more powerful tiers. so with white mana in general 1(w) = X(g) where X is a very amplified amount. each (w) we use up will yield many layers of magnitude more (g) each time we make this transformation.
4) so now we make it to our green mana. much like our white mana the strongest use of the mana is to convert it into black mana. much like our (w)->(g) transformation here we will take 1(g) = X(b). also much like the previous scenario we will likely be doing these transformations with the ability to make more green mana on the stack(spells or triggers). while our white came exclusively from artifacts our green comes from 2 different types of resources, 1 artifact and 1 land. while we don't need an artifact reset to make more green mana we will need to use up at least 1 white mana to restart our green mana engine(of note here is that we do need at least 2, and sometimes 4, green mana to convert white into green, we also need 2 black mana and luckily both of these are easily stored in our mana pool and can be safely stored/saved while moving through the layers of the deck).
5) so the primary thing that black mana does is update the amount of enchantments in play. it does some smaller things as well but the big one is updating our strongest and most relevant enchantments. we also will be increasing our storm count(TYS and actual) pretty aggressively here. once we get to a certain point in the development of our board state we will actually get a buff in our storm generation. we get another buff even deeper into the playing of the deck. black mana is made only through the tapping/use of a swamp. while indeed green can be made via a land we need to save our 1 land drop for the playing of our swamp. the only other way we can get our swamp into play would require the use of one of our 2.5 resources and that is just incredibly wasteful. our black mana can also be used to reset our creatures. the strategy for doing this does require using a creature wipe. while it is a bit clunky for sure it is very doable and allows us to reset all of our creatures, not just the one in question, which leads to some more residual value. we do have an interesting white mana modifier happening at times in the black mana operations. it doesn't happen 100% of the time but when the conditions are correct we can get pretty substantial additional update to our white mana production. another thing we get here is the ability to preserve specific artifacts through the artifact resets.
6) so our main use of red mana is to make as much of it as possible and then loop it back through our 2.5 resoures in the form of additional copies.
A) we cast both our mox's(1,2), then tinder wall(3) using up our green. then sac wall and with the 3 mana cast chaos warp(#1)(4) targeting mox pearl. warp finds us omniscience(8).
B) we cast kykar, wind's fury(5). we cast Thousand-year storm(6) and get a kykar spirit(1).
C) we now cast chaos warp(#2)(7) targeting mox emerald. when we do this we get a kykar trigger and a TYS trigger wanting to go onto the stack at the same time. we order them to resolve the TYS trigger first. with this warp we will target the kykar token. we resolve the warp and get doubling season(9). now we resolve the kykar trigger, which now gives us 2 spirits(2). we now resolve the original warp(#2) and get future sight(10) into play.
D) we now cast welding jar(11) of the top of our library getting 2 spirits(4). next we cast chrome mox(12) off the top(6 spirits). we imprint nothing.
E) we now cast mirrorworks(13) off the top(down to 1 and then back up to 3 spirits). we now cast mox emerald(1) off the top(5) and then use 2 spirits to pay for MW trigger(down to 3) getting 2 more mox emerald tokens. next we cast mox pearl(2) and repeat the same triggers etc staying level at 3 spirits and netting an original mox pearl and 2 token copies of it.
F) we now tap our 2 actual mox's for mana and then sac 1 spirit(2) making 3 mana and then casting chaos warp(#3)(14) off the top. we will let kykar's trigger resolve here(4 spirits left) and then TYS will also resolve its triggers. our targets for the 3(1 + 2 copies) warps will be our 2 tapped actual mox's and welding jar. it doesn't matter what order things go away here but we start to resolve the 3 warps.
G) warp 1 gets us opalescence(15) so now all other non aura's are creatures. warp 2 gets us flameshadow conjuring(16). FSC enters as a creature and self triggers, which we will pay for(down to 3 spirits) and get 2 more FSC token copies. next warp 3 gets us cathar's crusade(17), which also enters as a creature and we get 3 FSC triggers, which we will sac our last 3 spirits(0) to pay for triggers while netting 7(1 org + 6 copies) CCs. we are going to start generating a lot of +1/+1 counters from this point. unless it's pertinent to some other effect i won't be mentioning all these triggers but they are happening and our board is slowly accumulating p/t.
H) now conveniently welding jar(11) is sitting on top of our deck, and we will cast it getting 2 spirits(2). next we will make our 1 land drop for the turn by playing basic swamp(18) off the top.
I) next we sac our 2 spirits(0) and cast runaway steam-kin(19) off the top. now our counters matter a great deal. so RSK enters and several triggers happen. we stack it so that our CC triggers resolve first, and this puts 14 counters on RSK. we immediately remove 12 to make 12 mana. we use this mana to pay for our first FSC trigger(11 mana left), this makes 2 RSK tokens and re-triggers our CCs again putting 14 counters on each RSK twice. we remove 27 from each new token and 30 from the original and have 95 mana floating. we again pay for our next FSC trigger(94 mana left) and repeat our making of additional RSK and then the removal of generated counters on all RSK(5 total now) going up to 230 mana. we drop down to 229 and pay for our last FSC trigger and repeat our creation of RSK tokens and removal of counters into mana. we end up with 7 RSK in play and 418 red mana floating. We now cast vedalken orrery(20)(414 mana left) off the top(getting 2 spirits)(4). at this point we will be using RSK generated mana whenever possible. the spirit tokens do have value but now its more in accumulating p/t than directly making mana. when VO resolves we will pay 2 mana(412) and get 2 copies. we now will cast painter's servant(21) off the top, when it resolves we will pay for all FSC triggers. we use at least 5 of these to name all five colors. now RSK is an even better mana maker. *note: not sure the mana math is correct here, but you get the point, especially after PS is in play*
so at this point we have completed most of the difficult parts of the set up process. we have a red mana engine in place to pay for all of our FSC triggers and Kykar is still around making tokens as well. all of this is getting us to a not even finished level 6 of our power hierarchy. we have no cards left in hand but we do have some good resources in play we can really start to build around. we are going to play just 2 more cards as we finish up our final prep for starting to move into higher powered levels. one of these cards will pick up essentially the rest of the deck, which if i listed them would kinda spoil some of the next few lines of play a bit. for the time being i am going to leave a few of these cards as ?????? and reveal them later as they become more relevant. in some cases we would benefit from casting these ?????? cards earlier but it is probably a minimal gain to do so. if i think its relevant to mention it i will but if i don't mention it know that i'm aware it might have been correct to cast them earlier.
J) so now we need to get some cards into hand to really start doing powerful things. our primary virtual card draw will be sumala woodshaper(22). it's sitting on top of our library and we will cast it. we do need to tap one each of our mox emerald and mox pearl tokens, but we do still have one of each in reserve for later use. so we indeed cast SWS and it enters the battlefield and we get several triggers. we have our SWS etb, our CC triggers, and finally our FSC triggers. we have plenty of mana floating but i'm going to resolve our CC triggers first, just to get them out of the way to de-clutter the stack a bit. i'm actually not gonna talk about the CC triggers much anymore. we've demonstrated the interaction between CC/PS/RSK and we know we can make a lot of mana. we don't use it for much currently(mostly just paying for FSC triggers) but it will have other uses later on and while the amount we make is relevant we can just know its happening in the back ground. we will assume we make the correct and optimized decisions as to pulling off counters at the correct time in each and every opportunity for every trigger etc going forward. now that our CC triggers have finished we are going to resolve the original SWS etb trigger before we pay for our FSC triggers. the trigger resolves and we get drake familiar(23). before moving to pay for the FSC triggers of SWS we will be doing some things with DF.
K) so with our FSC triggers from SWS(3 triggers) on the stack we will cast DF. when it etb's we again have a few things to arrange on the stack. will actually arrange the stack so that the original DF etb resolves last, and our FSC triggers for DF(3 triggers) will attempt to resolve first. we pay 1 red and use up our first DF/FSC trigger(2 remaining plus original), getting us 2 token copies of DF. their etb triggers go onto the stack. one of the fairly unique aspects of DFs trigger is that it doesn't target and it is a true etb and not a "as" clause. in this case it means we just have their triggers on the stack and resolve through them one at a time. us having flash though means we can respond between them and replay the same enchantment to be bounced again for as many DF etb triggers as we have. with our first etb trigger will pick up FSC. we will replay the FSC before our next DF etb resolves. FSC entering triggers our current FSC(as well as itself) and we get 3 FSC/FSC triggers. we pay for each in succession getting 6 new FSC into play(9 total). now our second DF token etb resolves(none left, but still have 2 more original FSC triggers from the original DF). we pick up DS and replay it before the next FSC needs to be paid. we get 9 FSC triggers and then get 2(1st),then 8(2nd), then 2048(3rd), then 2^2059(4th), then 2^2059 + 2^(2^2059)(5th), then ......(6th) and .......(7th)...... and (8th) ...... and (9th) more DSs into play. this is a lot of DS and now when we go to pay for our 2nd DF/FSC trigger we are going to get our 9th gen amplified number of DS putting many many many DF tokens into play. as we did in the last batch(only 2 tokens) we will arrange them in an alternating pattern of FSC then DS then FSC then DS etc etc until we reach the end of our DF 2nd FSC trigger tokens. then we pay for the 3rd original DF/FSC trigger and resolve those out as well again alternating between FSC and DS updates again. once that has fully been worked through we will let the original actually DF card resolve its etb. in this case we actually do not bounce anything and just let our DF die and go to our graveyard. we have our reasons for wanting it in our yard and while this was a bit anti climactic we don't currently have an empty stack. we still have our FSC triggers from our SWS to work through.
edit #1: i think we want to update TYS before we fully run out of our DF etb triggers. we need to update that now as we won't have another chance before we cast our next ins/sor.
L) so we pay for one of our 3 original SWS/FSC triggers and get many many SWS tokens. this obviously will be enough to draw/acquire whatever other creatures or enchantments we want from the deck. this also means if we can't get cards back into the deck many of these etb's will go to waste. while i'm still trying to figure out the exact ordering of a chunk of the card we will get from this series of etb's, one card we will have access too is God-eternal Rhonas(24). this when seen many times will make our p/t on board pretty substantial. we use our FSC to make tokens of GER and use those to legend rule the original to die. when it does we will be able to find it with our next SWS trigger. also we will have many FSC triggers getting many GER tokens. all but 1 per batch will die(and then it will die to the next batch) but we do get the benefits from GERs etb doubling our boards power each time.
moving any further into the playing of the deck starts to open up into our mana production. that will be phase 2 and so i think this is a good place to stop for now. FWIW i think the things talked about so far are actually more complicated than the later stuff, but this mess needed to happen to get to point where we can really do powerful things.
I'm not going to attempt a full analysis. But it looks like you are kinda falling into a trap of increasing the same thing multiple ways, for example, the red mana for Flameshadow Conjuring, you generate through both Kykar tokens and RSK's counters. Furthermore, the RSK counters are from both a random red spell, (any spell thanks to painter's servant) and also by cathar's crusade.
I know that it enables a much bigger multiplier as the combo goes on, but deckslots are very limited, and now there are more ways you have to be careful not to go infinite with.
What you basically have here is a way to make a bunch of doubling seasons. In the end this seems surprisingly similar to the previous constructions that used Allay, Cowardice, Psychic Battle and Dual Nature.
In a true Christmas miracle, I think I've found a solution for the Chalice deck that doesn't add any new cards! We just replace Millikin with False Memories or another 2-mana instant that mills.
Now, our only way of milling cards can only be reset by itself, which means False Memories has to already in the graveyard when a Thousand-Year Storm copy of it resolves. Only way to get that is by countering it, and our only way of doing that is with Chalice of the Void. In other words, the only time we can ever get our instants from our library into our graveyard is when Chalice of the void is set to 2.
This does mean we can't play Goryo's Vengeance with every Psychic Battle trigger off Anaba Ancestor. In fact, we can only play it once per hyperstage transition. That doesn't matter, though, because we can still get one Muzzio, Visionary Architect for every Thousand-Year Storm that triggers off of the first Goryo's Vengeance, and that's enough to generate N Clockwork Gnomes. The tricky part is in the actual transition. The line looks like this:
Assume we already have out two untapped Anaba Ancestor tokens (we can guarantee this by simply not executing the last stage: even though we can't use the last one, since we can regenerate both it doesn't affect the overall play). Once we are done with our Goryo's Vengeance Shenanigans (Vengeance in library), we cast Hurkyl's Recall with the second Psychic Battle trigger. We replay Changeling Hero, championing Vedalken Orrery, then resolve Recall, bouncing all artifacts. The next Battle trigger gets Orrery back, and we replay our various artifacts (Hurkyl's Recall also in library), including Chalice on 2. We let another trigger resolve, casting False Memories. Chalice counters it, we put it back in our library, and the copies mill all three of our instants.
Now comes the tricky part. We let another trigger resolve, and cast Hurkyl's Recall, then counter it with the triggers on the stack. While those Recall copies are still waiting to resolve, we play Anaba Ancestor for Bloodbond March triggers. We activate the second Ancestor token, bouncing the nontoken (and giving us the triggers we need to regenerate that buffer), but we also use it to cast another False Memories, milling Hurkyl's Recall and False Memories. At this point, we can still cast Goryo's Vengeance, in fact, we can cast it as much as we want. But we haven't used up any key artifacts yet, and we don't have any Clockwork Gnomes, so doing so won't help us at all.
In any case, after we've milled Hurkyl's Recall again, we play the nontoken Ancestor again for another stack of Bloodbond March triggers. We play Engineered Explosives for 2, then play Wheel of Sun and Moon. We can't resolve Wheel with Chalice on 2, so we kill it. We now can no longer self-mill without fizzling, so our window to cast Goryo's Vengeance is closed: if we cast it no, we have no way to get it back in the graveyard to cast again once we wrap up the transition. We crack Explosives, it goes on the bottom, and we resolve the trigger, getting an Anaba Ancestor. The Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March triggers from earlier resolve, and we get the second Anaba Ancestor back, too.
Now, we have a single untapped Muzzio out, no way of getting more yet, and both Chalice AND Explosives are in our library. We fizzle if we get Explosives (no Chalice means no Bloodbond March triggers to combo with Explosives in the first place), so we have to get Chalice. We resolve our Hurkyl's Recall, resetting Chalice to 4, and we're back to where we started, with no problematic Muzzio banked up.
The only question is whether it's too expensive to require 2 Ancestors to start after a Megastage transition. But since we can store both Engineered Explosives and Goblin Dark-Dwellers in hand through a Child of Alara trigger, I don't foresee any trouble there.
Ooh! That looks really nice, kind of similar to how the standard combo used gaea's blessing and ionize as life limited card draw. So this tech should not go infinite assuming my understanding of the chalice interactions is close enough to correct. My question is if we need to mill more than when chalice is on 2? It seems like the verdant succession tricks with vat save us at the top, The transition line you have provided, and lower we can fold into higher mills.
I'm not 100% sold on this yet but I like this a lot more than millikin. Getting the initial two Ancestor tokens looks tricky, but doable. And I am still not confident in all of the chalice interactions.
edit: and Dampen thought can splice onto Goryo's Vengeance to get a bunch of alternating mill/reanimates which seems like it might be more efficient, though maybe too efficient? (and it looks like we cant keep it in hand through a worldfire)
I don't think there's any chance Dampen Thought's splice meaningfully adds to the damage total, and it only adds another corner case we'd have to double check. Plus, the on-point-ness of Brain Freeze for this entire challenge and this deck in particular with its bizarre Chalice of the Void shenanigans makes it a no-brainer. I'm honestly kicking myself a bit for not using it in the first place
On a second look today, I have found a few issues with the new deck, though they all have relatively easy fixes:
We no longer purely need Clockwork Gnomes to do anything that keeps the combo going, so I don't think we're protected from the infinite where we use Hurkyl's Recall alone for all the Mana generation. Switching out Eye of Ramos for Silver Myr should fix that, though that might make the setup harder.
Now that Devout Chaplain is our humans stage creature instead of Royal Assassin, we can hit Chaplain with Western Paladin in the zombies stage and go infinite that way, so our stage sequence doesn't work anymore. We can solve this by putting Devout Chaplain between the soldiers and zombies stage, cutting the wizards stage, and adding Wilderness Hypnotist and Streambed Aquitects between the red Mana and Old Man of the Sea stages. We should also probably explore whether there's a more efficient stage layout at the top at some point, because there may be a way to squeeze in a ninth stage that we missed last time.
I might be missing something, but how are we repeatedly casting hurkyl's recall for this infinite?
If we can find a k'rrik compatible dies trigger we can swap spider spawning up and open green mana. Highland Game? We'd only have blue and colorless at that point so we can't ee=2 to kill it?
And I can easily see WotC printing a suitable "dies gain 4" creature in basically any set.
Unfortunately, I think there's another infinite we have to handle: the new version doesn't rely on any Clockwork Gnomes activations to regenerate Explosives, so there's nothing to stop us from repeatedly milling all 3 instants and Wheel of Sun and Moon, then making another Anaba Ancestor for every Psychic Battle trigger on the stack. Both Millikin and Myr Welder were enough to stop it, but we can't go without BOTH.
We can't even just go back to Myr Welder, because then nothing is forcing us to kill Chalice of the Void mid-transition, so nothing forces us to use up that Muzzio. We need to find some way to make the transition rely on resolving a 2-mana spell.
Also, Highland Game doesn't work, because we NEED to be able to explosives for 2 to kill Anaba Ancestor. We might be stuck waiting for wizards to print the 3G 3/4 creature that gains 4 life when it dies (I too find it hard to believe they haven't done so already)
I'm talking about two different lines here, hence the confusion. I think you're right about the first one, though Deedlit will be more familiar with it than I am and might see something we missed. The second line would start the same as the hyperstage line I described above, but as it's rebuilding the Anaba Ancestors, it also casts Goryo's Vengeance again to refresh Muzzio, getting back Explosives, Chalice, and storing an untapped Muzzio, but exiling Vengeance. Then it lets the Hurkyl's Recall resolve, championing Vedalken Orrery so it can respond to the next Ancestor trigger down. After Orrery comes back, we're back to where we started at the beginning of the transition: we have no artifacts besides Orrery, Goryo's Vengeance and Hurkyl's Recall are in exile, Brain Freeze is in the library, and both Chalice and Explosives are in hand. But we also have one extra Ancestor token. So we wind up being able to get an Ancestor token for EACH ancestor trigger, not just one.
We can prevent this by forcing some aspect of it to rely on tapping an artifact creature. Either Millikin or Myr Welder will do, I believe, but we need one.
Phase 2: making our first black mana batch, using that black mana, then making our first green mana batch and using it to make many black mana.
so as i said in the very beginning our black mana will indeed all come from the 1 swamp we see in play currently. that being said we still need to draw a few more cards to really get our production levels up, 1 black just isn't going to do that much. fortunately we have a bunch of SWS triggers on the stack to draw those cards. moving forward when i say use up X SWS triggers i am referring to step L from phase 1. some of these cards must be gotten to hand during these SWS triggers resolving. we probably could do it all with the SWS triggers on the stack, i'm honestly not sure if its optimum to do so. i've always just figured id use them up get what i needed and then move on having everything i needed in hand(or top of deck). plus needing to go up and down the stack just to get access to cards seems a bit sloppy. when i refer to these "drawn" cards i'll be assuming we got them in the process of using up our SWS triggers and they have just been sitting in our hand waiting to be used.
A) so before we get too far we are going to need to grab a few more cards. we use up 2 SWS draws and pick up Death's Presence(25) and Mana Reflection(26). we cast both and resolve all FSC triggers on both of them. obviously now our swamp taps for a lot of mana now but we have a few more things we need in place before we get too far. these will be use more during the use of said black mana but that's coming right up. we cast fervor(27), nivmagus elemental(28), sculpting steel(29) copying welding jar(11), and lastly coretapper(30). all of these will be cast off the top of the deck. *a quick note: SS will indeed become MW at some point but that point isn't right now, it will likely be right before we start recasting our mox's from the deck again* all of these will be cast and resolve and be copied by FSC and MW many times when we pay for said triggers.
B) we sacrifice any original creatures/artifacts that are capable of doing so. this should mean we have welding jar(11), tinder wall(3), core tapper(30)(it doesn't do anything but we can target MW to get CT into the yard), sculpting steel(29) and drake familiar(23) in our yard. this will also get us many DP(25) triggers, and we will put all of those counters on RSKs and turn those into mana. i won't mention DP much but any time creatures are dying to non board wipes means we will be using these DP triggers to up our red mana output. these triggers aren't super relevant yet but they do play a more important role later on.
C) we now tap our swamp and make many black mana
D) we now use (B)(B) and (R)(R)(R) to cast Beacon of Unrest(31)(#1) off the top, targeting core tapper. our many TYSs trigger.
E) we let the first TYS trigger resolve and get 3 BU copies(we have only cast 4 ins/sor up to this point) which i will refer to as batch size of 3. we don't want our original BU to fizzle so our targets for the 3 copies will not include CT. the 3 targets will be DF, wall, and jar, resolving in a first->last order.
F) much like step K from phase 1 we do some heavy duty enchantment updating as DF enters the field again. just as before we will use DFs trigger to kill the original putting it back into the yard.
G) once our DF has finished resolving all its triggers we then pull back wall, and jar making many copies of each as they enter. before the next BU/TYS trigger resolves we sac our original jar and wall to get them back into the yard.
H) the next TYS/BU trigger resolves and we get another batch. we repeat the targeting and processing of this batch just like steps E-G. we will repeat these processes for each BU/TYS trigger that creates a new batch. once we are down to our final batch before we would resolve our original BU targeting the CT we will use our very last DF trigger to update the number of TYS in play. then our original BU resolves and shuffles back to the top of the library.
I) we then loop back to step D and repeat steps D-H but with a batch size of 4 this time and a much higher TYS count. with a batch count of 4 we add SS(29)(copying jar) to the recycling regiment. now once the group has been processed we again loop back to D and again loop again using up another (B)(B) in the process and upping our batch count to 5. at batch counts exceeding 4 we have more BU copies per batch than we can use(in this current set up anyway). the excess copies we will be eating with our NME(28) so they don't just go completely to waste.
J) so we will use up all of our black mana in groups of 2 by processing D-I many many times. as we get into using up our final batch from our final 2 black mana we will need to prepare for the next part of the deck, which will be getting and then using green mana. to prepare for this we will make sure we will use our last 2 DF triggers to update our TYS as usual but then also update our MR as well.
so D-J is how we process our black mana when we can make it. now though, we are out of black mana, so how do we get more? well we are going to make a bit of green mana and then use that to make a lot of black and then process that black mana just as we have already demonstrated. so the first thing we are going to do to make more black mana is actually just use 2 cards and get a 2nd black mana burst before actually needing to use up any green mana.
L) we cast genju on our swamp, then pay (R)(R) to animate the swamp, then cast KGF also onto the swamp. we then sac the animated swamp to kykar(animating via genju turns the swamp into a spirit, how convenient) to make (R). now some triggers need to happen. the genju will end up back in our hand, and the swamp will end up back in play, but KGF will stay in our yard. we then tap our swamp again and make another batch of black mana. we will process this batch of mana just as we did previously in steps D-J. also as before as we come down to the end of this whole process we will making sure to update TYS and MR right at the very end to have them as updated as possible leading into making green mana.
M) so now we will finally tap our mox emerald token that's still untapped we made way back in step E of phase 1. this will make a large amount of green mana.
N) now we will cast Dowsing Shaman(34) from hand. it will enter and we will get many FSC triggers. we will respond by paying (R)(R)(G) and tapping our original D-sham, targeting KGF in our graveyard. this will bring KGF back to hand.
O) still responding to our D-sham/FSC triggers we will repeat the first part of step L. this will get us back to having genju in hand, KGF in yard, and a bunch more black mana again. we then repeat the 2nd half of step L and process all that black mana as we did before using up 2 per cycle.
P) now we have used up our original D-sham activation up but we still have green mana to spend. we now pay for 1 of the D-sham/FSC triggers we left on the stack. because we have greatly updated our DS count since we made our green mana we should make more D-sham's than we have green mana to spend even from just resolving 1 D-sham/FSC trigger.
Q) we now repeat step N(this time we aren't casting the D-sham, but functionally we are acting similarly as we are still responding to FSC triggers)and step O. this manner of processing is how we turn 1 green into many black. any time we get access to black mana we immediately process all of it as seen earlier. we then use up 1 green to restart that process all over again.
so again i think this is a good spot to stop. the using of white mana to make green is a much more powerful(and complicated) process. also getting access to white changes how we use our black mana. we only need 2 white mana once to introduce this change but it changes things quite a bit. between the complexity of the white->green and then the further complication of using black mana just feels like i'm going to call that whole process phase 3. just as a note we will leave this phase in an attempt to go up to making white mana, but we will need to have at least (G)(G)(G)(G)(B)(B) floating.
other notes: yeah i don't think the first part i posted actually does anything too impressive. it's more just showing i can get it up and running and doing it while using cards that have alternative uses later in the deck. also i am going to be using bargain to convert life into draws so not using any life in the set up seems strong. the multiple sources of red mana do serve a purpose. kykar i needed to get up and running and RSK/CC/PS is there to make sure i can have enough to pay for all the FSC triggers as kykar would not be enough on his own. also i can't update the number of kykar. kykar also gives me chaos warp targets and or mana and i need a bit of both early in the set up. also having excess red mana will be quite handy even deeper into the deck so i don't mind if i produce excess red relatively frequently as we will eventually have a use for it. also i'm referencing my post #2363
Stakfish:
There being two lines makes much more sense, though I'm still not sure we actually have a problem.
Could you go into a bit more detail of the process from going from, say, two untapped ancestor tokens to three?
J_kibbs:
Your process does make quite a few layers, currently I'd give a very rough and inaccurate guesstimate at between x->x->10 and x->x->60.
And just guessing at the rest of the deck assuming similar card efficiency can get you to between x->x->20 and x->x->120.
Some of your card choices are still a bit strange to me, Flameshadow conjuring seems a lot worse than dual nature if you have haste from a fervor anyway. (dual nature's bad triggers aren't as bad as they seem [I think there's a post kinda early in this thread that has the line]). (Or just not have fervor and save a card slot)
Nivmagus Elemental and Death's Presence don't seem to be doing anything yet? They kinda give you more red mana? But you have enough of that anyway. They help with keeping power on the board to swing with, but their effect is negligible compared to the number of creatures and enchantments you can swing with.
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Phasing needs exactly Vision Charm and Time and Tide? Both of which can be cast with Goblin Dark Dwellers.
But, that lets us smuggle untapped metallurgeon tokens down the stack and go infinite.
Getting battlecry back in would be nice but we need a nonwhite cenn's tactician.
Crossroads consecrator is very close.
Anaba Ancestor, Crypt sliver? Merfolk assassin + Lord of atlantis? all stuck at 2 cmc...
Dwarven Pony and Dwarven Nomad? needs red mana though...
Magma sliver + 1 cmc sliver like screeching sliver? I think this might go infinite?
If we make sure to create a token copy of Mirrorworks after the megastage transition and rebuy the nontoken (none of which is too expensive at that point), we can use the first Thousand-Year Storm trigger copying Smite the Monstrous to repeatedly bounce and replay the nontoken Mirrorworks, using the triggers from the tokens to make more copies until we have N Mirrorworks. Then, every time we replay our artifacts at the top level, we'll get a number of token copies equal to our storm count, and our progress is saved. The same thing works in the gigastage, too.
So now our only problem is finding a way to stop ourselves from casting Goryo's Vengeance in the middle of the hyperstage transition, or of using up a Muzzio, Visionary Architect activation after the second Hurkyl's Recall but before we enter the next transition.
Edit: it doesn't fix the problems itself, but the Select for Inspection tech should let us shave a card off. It doesn't just replace the second Muzzio, it also replaces Royal Assassin all the way at the bottom of the stack: we can have Devout Chaplain and Select for Inspection work in a stage the same way Sea Snidd and Reign of Chaos do. The prospective list was 61 cards before, so that at least helps a bit.
Select for Inspection(/Summary Judgment) combos with Muzzio and Goryo's vengeance kinda powerfully. It lets us get many muzzio activations if Chalice gets set to three. As we can cast Muzzio into Chalice=3 and counter it, Get a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers each of which return it into play, Legend rule it onto a vat, make a token, activate it, Mirror it off of vat, mill it, then gets returned again with the next bloodbond march trigger. (Still needs Goryo's vengeance to make the initial tapped muzzio)
I've been thinking about ways we could make Goryo's Vengeance harder to cast mid-transition. The only approach I've found to be promising is to make it hard to get Vengeance BACK into the graveyard after casting it. That way, if we do cast it, that closes off the option to use it later and we would fizzle out instead of going infinite. Getting it into the graveyard from the stack right now is a 3-step process: we let it resolve and go into exile, use Mirror of Fate to bring it from exile to the library, then use a Millikin to bring it from the library to the graveyard.
I've found some potential lines sans Mirror of Fate, where we can only use Wheel of Sun and Moon to circumvent the exile and then mill the spell, but then we have to find another way to free cards from under Mimic Vat and Spellweaver Helix. I haven't found much by replacing Millikin... I guess we could also find some bizarre way to force us to activate Muzzio AFTER the second Hurkyl's Recall resolves but I don't see how an activation at that point would be any different from an activation even later on.
One last note: slivers and green creatures are both off-limits for the hyperstage. Green creatures are too easily fetched with Verdant Succession, and slivers will also give the ability to the Changeling.
Edit: Oh, I see. We get two replacement effects, so we get to choose which one we process.
Its a possible line to be wary of for infinites, but seems safe and on the net less efficient than just using a Goryo's vengeance for an activation, without having to mess around with chalice.
Yeah, slivers look dangerous but at least the real changeling hero doesn't have haste so the line is more complicated. (especially with chalice)
As for replacing Mirror of Fate - could Riftsweeper work? To reuse Riftsweeper, we would have to Champion it with Changeling Hero, then bounce the Hero. So that will break up the usages of Goryo's Vengeance. I'm not whether that fixes things or not. Also, we would have the problem of figuring out how to get Clockwork Gnomes back after it is exiled.
Riftsweeper seems hard to make work, we need to get things back from exile pretty regularly, mimic vat can help by re-imprinting and put something back that way, but I don't think that's enough.
max damage 2019
operations breakdown: most powerful/rarest -> least powerful/most common
1) making blue mana
2) using life to draw cards
2.5) our artifact resets
3) making white mana
4) making green mana
5) making black mana
6) making red mana
1+2) these are our reshuffling operations. this will allow us to replay everything again many many times.
2.5) these are our artifact resets. they come in 2 varieties: single target and also fully resetting everything artifact and then rebuilding from there.
3) all of our white mana comes exclusively from artifact sources. once we have used all of these resources up we will need to move to a point on the stack where we can access an artifact reset. while these are pretty rare we do have some ability to extend these reset actions more than it might seem. our strongest use of white mana is to use it to make 1 white(or even less) mana into many many green mana. generally as we move from a lower number in the hierarchy into a higher one we will be doing it with triggers on the stack to make more of the lower resource. our strongest non artifact updating comes during the use of our black mana and these updates will ripple back down the chain and definitely effect the potency of the triggers happening in the more powerful tiers. so with white mana in general 1(w) = X(g) where X is a very amplified amount. each (w) we use up will yield many layers of magnitude more (g) each time we make this transformation.
4) so now we make it to our green mana. much like our white mana the strongest use of the mana is to convert it into black mana. much like our (w)->(g) transformation here we will take 1(g) = X(b). also much like the previous scenario we will likely be doing these transformations with the ability to make more green mana on the stack(spells or triggers). while our white came exclusively from artifacts our green comes from 2 different types of resources, 1 artifact and 1 land. while we don't need an artifact reset to make more green mana we will need to use up at least 1 white mana to restart our green mana engine(of note here is that we do need at least 2, and sometimes 4, green mana to convert white into green, we also need 2 black mana and luckily both of these are easily stored in our mana pool and can be safely stored/saved while moving through the layers of the deck).
5) so the primary thing that black mana does is update the amount of enchantments in play. it does some smaller things as well but the big one is updating our strongest and most relevant enchantments. we also will be increasing our storm count(TYS and actual) pretty aggressively here. once we get to a certain point in the development of our board state we will actually get a buff in our storm generation. we get another buff even deeper into the playing of the deck. black mana is made only through the tapping/use of a swamp. while indeed green can be made via a land we need to save our 1 land drop for the playing of our swamp. the only other way we can get our swamp into play would require the use of one of our 2.5 resources and that is just incredibly wasteful. our black mana can also be used to reset our creatures. the strategy for doing this does require using a creature wipe. while it is a bit clunky for sure it is very doable and allows us to reset all of our creatures, not just the one in question, which leads to some more residual value. we do have an interesting white mana modifier happening at times in the black mana operations. it doesn't happen 100% of the time but when the conditions are correct we can get pretty substantial additional update to our white mana production. another thing we get here is the ability to preserve specific artifacts through the artifact resets.
6) so our main use of red mana is to make as much of it as possible and then loop it back through our 2.5 resoures in the form of additional copies.
phase 1: the opening 7 and initial set up
1 mox emerald
2 mox pearl
3 tinder wall
4 chaos warp(#1)
5 kykar, wind's fury
6 thousand-year storm
7 chaos warp(#2)
A) we cast both our mox's(1,2), then tinder wall(3) using up our green. then sac wall and with the 3 mana cast chaos warp(#1)(4) targeting mox pearl. warp finds us omniscience(8).
B) we cast kykar, wind's fury(5). we cast Thousand-year storm(6) and get a kykar spirit(1).
C) we now cast chaos warp(#2)(7) targeting mox emerald. when we do this we get a kykar trigger and a TYS trigger wanting to go onto the stack at the same time. we order them to resolve the TYS trigger first. with this warp we will target the kykar token. we resolve the warp and get doubling season(9). now we resolve the kykar trigger, which now gives us 2 spirits(2). we now resolve the original warp(#2) and get future sight(10) into play.
D) we now cast welding jar(11) of the top of our library getting 2 spirits(4). next we cast chrome mox(12) off the top(6 spirits). we imprint nothing.
E) we now cast mirrorworks(13) off the top(down to 1 and then back up to 3 spirits). we now cast mox emerald(1) off the top(5) and then use 2 spirits to pay for MW trigger(down to 3) getting 2 more mox emerald tokens. next we cast mox pearl(2) and repeat the same triggers etc staying level at 3 spirits and netting an original mox pearl and 2 token copies of it.
F) we now tap our 2 actual mox's for mana and then sac 1 spirit(2) making 3 mana and then casting chaos warp(#3)(14) off the top. we will let kykar's trigger resolve here(4 spirits left) and then TYS will also resolve its triggers. our targets for the 3(1 + 2 copies) warps will be our 2 tapped actual mox's and welding jar. it doesn't matter what order things go away here but we start to resolve the 3 warps.
G) warp 1 gets us opalescence(15) so now all other non aura's are creatures. warp 2 gets us flameshadow conjuring(16). FSC enters as a creature and self triggers, which we will pay for(down to 3 spirits) and get 2 more FSC token copies. next warp 3 gets us cathar's crusade(17), which also enters as a creature and we get 3 FSC triggers, which we will sac our last 3 spirits(0) to pay for triggers while netting 7(1 org + 6 copies) CCs. we are going to start generating a lot of +1/+1 counters from this point. unless it's pertinent to some other effect i won't be mentioning all these triggers but they are happening and our board is slowly accumulating p/t.
H) now conveniently welding jar(11) is sitting on top of our deck, and we will cast it getting 2 spirits(2). next we will make our 1 land drop for the turn by playing basic swamp(18) off the top.
I) next we sac our 2 spirits(0) and cast runaway steam-kin(19) off the top. now our counters matter a great deal. so RSK enters and several triggers happen. we stack it so that our CC triggers resolve first, and this puts 14 counters on RSK. we immediately remove 12 to make 12 mana. we use this mana to pay for our first FSC trigger(11 mana left), this makes 2 RSK tokens and re-triggers our CCs again putting 14 counters on each RSK twice. we remove 27 from each new token and 30 from the original and have 95 mana floating. we again pay for our next FSC trigger(94 mana left) and repeat our making of additional RSK and then the removal of generated counters on all RSK(5 total now) going up to 230 mana. we drop down to 229 and pay for our last FSC trigger and repeat our creation of RSK tokens and removal of counters into mana. we end up with 7 RSK in play and 418 red mana floating. We now cast vedalken orrery(20)(414 mana left) off the top(getting 2 spirits)(4). at this point we will be using RSK generated mana whenever possible. the spirit tokens do have value but now its more in accumulating p/t than directly making mana. when VO resolves we will pay 2 mana(412) and get 2 copies. we now will cast painter's servant(21) off the top, when it resolves we will pay for all FSC triggers. we use at least 5 of these to name all five colors. now RSK is an even better mana maker. *note: not sure the mana math is correct here, but you get the point, especially after PS is in play*
so at this point we have completed most of the difficult parts of the set up process. we have a red mana engine in place to pay for all of our FSC triggers and Kykar is still around making tokens as well. all of this is getting us to a not even finished level 6 of our power hierarchy. we have no cards left in hand but we do have some good resources in play we can really start to build around. we are going to play just 2 more cards as we finish up our final prep for starting to move into higher powered levels. one of these cards will pick up essentially the rest of the deck, which if i listed them would kinda spoil some of the next few lines of play a bit. for the time being i am going to leave a few of these cards as ?????? and reveal them later as they become more relevant. in some cases we would benefit from casting these ?????? cards earlier but it is probably a minimal gain to do so. if i think its relevant to mention it i will but if i don't mention it know that i'm aware it might have been correct to cast them earlier.
J) so now we need to get some cards into hand to really start doing powerful things. our primary virtual card draw will be sumala woodshaper(22). it's sitting on top of our library and we will cast it. we do need to tap one each of our mox emerald and mox pearl tokens, but we do still have one of each in reserve for later use. so we indeed cast SWS and it enters the battlefield and we get several triggers. we have our SWS etb, our CC triggers, and finally our FSC triggers. we have plenty of mana floating but i'm going to resolve our CC triggers first, just to get them out of the way to de-clutter the stack a bit. i'm actually not gonna talk about the CC triggers much anymore. we've demonstrated the interaction between CC/PS/RSK and we know we can make a lot of mana. we don't use it for much currently(mostly just paying for FSC triggers) but it will have other uses later on and while the amount we make is relevant we can just know its happening in the back ground. we will assume we make the correct and optimized decisions as to pulling off counters at the correct time in each and every opportunity for every trigger etc going forward. now that our CC triggers have finished we are going to resolve the original SWS etb trigger before we pay for our FSC triggers. the trigger resolves and we get drake familiar(23). before moving to pay for the FSC triggers of SWS we will be doing some things with DF.
K) so with our FSC triggers from SWS(3 triggers) on the stack we will cast DF. when it etb's we again have a few things to arrange on the stack. will actually arrange the stack so that the original DF etb resolves last, and our FSC triggers for DF(3 triggers) will attempt to resolve first. we pay 1 red and use up our first DF/FSC trigger(2 remaining plus original), getting us 2 token copies of DF. their etb triggers go onto the stack. one of the fairly unique aspects of DFs trigger is that it doesn't target and it is a true etb and not a "as" clause. in this case it means we just have their triggers on the stack and resolve through them one at a time. us having flash though means we can respond between them and replay the same enchantment to be bounced again for as many DF etb triggers as we have. with our first etb trigger will pick up FSC. we will replay the FSC before our next DF etb resolves. FSC entering triggers our current FSC(as well as itself) and we get 3 FSC/FSC triggers. we pay for each in succession getting 6 new FSC into play(9 total). now our second DF token etb resolves(none left, but still have 2 more original FSC triggers from the original DF). we pick up DS and replay it before the next FSC needs to be paid. we get 9 FSC triggers and then get 2(1st),then 8(2nd), then 2048(3rd), then 2^2059(4th), then 2^2059 + 2^(2^2059)(5th), then ......(6th) and .......(7th)...... and (8th) ...... and (9th) more DSs into play. this is a lot of DS and now when we go to pay for our 2nd DF/FSC trigger we are going to get our 9th gen amplified number of DS putting many many many DF tokens into play. as we did in the last batch(only 2 tokens) we will arrange them in an alternating pattern of FSC then DS then FSC then DS etc etc until we reach the end of our DF 2nd FSC trigger tokens. then we pay for the 3rd original DF/FSC trigger and resolve those out as well again alternating between FSC and DS updates again. once that has fully been worked through we will let the original actually DF card resolve its etb. in this case we actually do not bounce anything and just let our DF die and go to our graveyard. we have our reasons for wanting it in our yard and while this was a bit anti climactic we don't currently have an empty stack. we still have our FSC triggers from our SWS to work through.
edit #1: i think we want to update TYS before we fully run out of our DF etb triggers. we need to update that now as we won't have another chance before we cast our next ins/sor.
L) so we pay for one of our 3 original SWS/FSC triggers and get many many SWS tokens. this obviously will be enough to draw/acquire whatever other creatures or enchantments we want from the deck. this also means if we can't get cards back into the deck many of these etb's will go to waste. while i'm still trying to figure out the exact ordering of a chunk of the card we will get from this series of etb's, one card we will have access too is God-eternal Rhonas(24). this when seen many times will make our p/t on board pretty substantial. we use our FSC to make tokens of GER and use those to legend rule the original to die. when it does we will be able to find it with our next SWS trigger. also we will have many FSC triggers getting many GER tokens. all but 1 per batch will die(and then it will die to the next batch) but we do get the benefits from GERs etb doubling our boards power each time.
moving any further into the playing of the deck starts to open up into our mana production. that will be phase 2 and so i think this is a good place to stop for now. FWIW i think the things talked about so far are actually more complicated than the later stuff, but this mess needed to happen to get to point where we can really do powerful things.
list so far
1 mox emerald
2 mox pearl
3 tinder wall
4 chaos warp(#1)
5 kykar, wind's fury
6 thousand-year storm
7 chaos warp(#2)
8 omniscience
9 doubling season
10 future sight
11 welding jar
12 chrome mox
13 mirrorworks
14 chaos warp(#3)
15 opalescence
16 flameshadow conjuring
17 cathar's crusade
18 swamp
19 runaway steam-kin
20 vedalken orrery
21 painter's servant
22 sumala woodshaper
23 drake familiar
24 God-eternal Rhonas
I know that it enables a much bigger multiplier as the combo goes on, but deckslots are very limited, and now there are more ways you have to be careful not to go infinite with.
What you basically have here is a way to make a bunch of doubling seasons. In the end this seems surprisingly similar to the previous constructions that used Allay, Cowardice, Psychic Battle and Dual Nature.
Now, our only way of milling cards can only be reset by itself, which means False Memories has to already in the graveyard when a Thousand-Year Storm copy of it resolves. Only way to get that is by countering it, and our only way of doing that is with Chalice of the Void. In other words, the only time we can ever get our instants from our library into our graveyard is when Chalice of the void is set to 2.
This does mean we can't play Goryo's Vengeance with every Psychic Battle trigger off Anaba Ancestor. In fact, we can only play it once per hyperstage transition. That doesn't matter, though, because we can still get one Muzzio, Visionary Architect for every Thousand-Year Storm that triggers off of the first Goryo's Vengeance, and that's enough to generate N Clockwork Gnomes. The tricky part is in the actual transition. The line looks like this:
Assume we already have out two untapped Anaba Ancestor tokens (we can guarantee this by simply not executing the last stage: even though we can't use the last one, since we can regenerate both it doesn't affect the overall play). Once we are done with our Goryo's Vengeance Shenanigans (Vengeance in library), we cast Hurkyl's Recall with the second Psychic Battle trigger. We replay Changeling Hero, championing Vedalken Orrery, then resolve Recall, bouncing all artifacts. The next Battle trigger gets Orrery back, and we replay our various artifacts (Hurkyl's Recall also in library), including Chalice on 2. We let another trigger resolve, casting False Memories. Chalice counters it, we put it back in our library, and the copies mill all three of our instants.
Now comes the tricky part. We let another trigger resolve, and cast Hurkyl's Recall, then counter it with the triggers on the stack. While those Recall copies are still waiting to resolve, we play Anaba Ancestor for Bloodbond March triggers. We activate the second Ancestor token, bouncing the nontoken (and giving us the triggers we need to regenerate that buffer), but we also use it to cast another False Memories, milling Hurkyl's Recall and False Memories. At this point, we can still cast Goryo's Vengeance, in fact, we can cast it as much as we want. But we haven't used up any key artifacts yet, and we don't have any Clockwork Gnomes, so doing so won't help us at all.
In any case, after we've milled Hurkyl's Recall again, we play the nontoken Ancestor again for another stack of Bloodbond March triggers. We play Engineered Explosives for 2, then play Wheel of Sun and Moon. We can't resolve Wheel with Chalice on 2, so we kill it. We now can no longer self-mill without fizzling, so our window to cast Goryo's Vengeance is closed: if we cast it no, we have no way to get it back in the graveyard to cast again once we wrap up the transition. We crack Explosives, it goes on the bottom, and we resolve the trigger, getting an Anaba Ancestor. The Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March triggers from earlier resolve, and we get the second Anaba Ancestor back, too.
Now, we have a single untapped Muzzio out, no way of getting more yet, and both Chalice AND Explosives are in our library. We fizzle if we get Explosives (no Chalice means no Bloodbond March triggers to combo with Explosives in the first place), so we have to get Chalice. We resolve our Hurkyl's Recall, resetting Chalice to 4, and we're back to where we started, with no problematic Muzzio banked up.
The only question is whether it's too expensive to require 2 Ancestors to start after a Megastage transition. But since we can store both Engineered Explosives and Goblin Dark-Dwellers in hand through a Child of Alara trigger, I don't foresee any trouble there.
Decklist would look 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 False Memories
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Eye of Ramos
18 Clockwork Gnomes
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Hurkyl's Recall
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Changeling Hero
24 Anaba Ancestor
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Wheel of Sun and Moon
28 Acorn Harvest
29 Smite the Monstrous
30 Child of Alara
31 Centaur Safeguard
32 Verdant Succession
33 Select for Inspection
34 Spellweaver Helix
35 Worldfire
36 Spider Spawning
37 Spider Spawning
38 Spider Spawning
39 Titania, Protector of Argoth
40 Multani's Decree
41 Bayou
42 Eureka
43 Mox Emerald
44 Vastwood Animist
45 Grassland Crusader
46 Western Paladin
47 Frightshroud Courier
49 Ghosthelm Courier
50 Devout Chaplain
51 Simian Spirit Guide
52 Goblin Kites
53 Old Man of the Sea
54 Sea Snidd
55 Reign of Chaos
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Tribal Unity
58 Thousand-Year Storm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Sphinx of Enlightenment
@J_kibbs: Unfortunately, I don't really have the energy right now to try to analyze your deck. But best of luck with it!
I'm not 100% sold on this yet but I like this a lot more than millikin. Getting the initial two Ancestor tokens looks tricky, but doable. And I am still not confident in all of the chalice interactions.
brain freeze even already has storm.(And a more accurate description of the deck too. (Shame glimpse the unthinkable is a sorcery.))
edit: and Dampen thought can splice onto Goryo's Vengeance to get a bunch of alternating mill/reanimates which seems like it might be more efficient, though maybe too efficient? (and it looks like we cant keep it in hand through a worldfire)
On a second look today, I have found a few issues with the new deck, though they all have relatively easy fixes:
We no longer purely need Clockwork Gnomes to do anything that keeps the combo going, so I don't think we're protected from the infinite where we use Hurkyl's Recall alone for all the Mana generation. Switching out Eye of Ramos for Silver Myr should fix that, though that might make the setup harder.
Now that Devout Chaplain is our humans stage creature instead of Royal Assassin, we can hit Chaplain with Western Paladin in the zombies stage and go infinite that way, so our stage sequence doesn't work anymore. We can solve this by putting Devout Chaplain between the soldiers and zombies stage, cutting the wizards stage, and adding Wilderness Hypnotist and Streambed Aquitects between the red Mana and Old Man of the Sea stages. We should also probably explore whether there's a more efficient stage layout at the top at some point, because there may be a way to squeeze in a ninth stage that we missed last time.
We do have the possibility of getting a ninth stage if we switch the gigastage to green mana; otherwise, we have to keep looking.
If we can find a k'rrik compatible dies trigger we can swap spider spawning up and open green mana. Highland Game? We'd only have blue and colorless at that point so we can't ee=2 to kill it?
And I can easily see WotC printing a suitable "dies gain 4" creature in basically any set.
We can't even just go back to Myr Welder, because then nothing is forcing us to kill Chalice of the Void mid-transition, so nothing forces us to use up that Muzzio. We need to find some way to make the transition rely on resolving a 2-mana spell.
Also, Highland Game doesn't work, because we NEED to be able to explosives for 2 to kill Anaba Ancestor. We might be stuck waiting for wizards to print the 3G 3/4 creature that gains 4 life when it dies (I too find it hard to believe they haven't done so already)
Hurkyl's only makes like 6 mana, I'm just not exactly following this line.
We can prevent this by forcing some aspect of it to rely on tapping an artifact creature. Either Millikin or Myr Welder will do, I believe, but we need one.
so as i said in the very beginning our black mana will indeed all come from the 1 swamp we see in play currently. that being said we still need to draw a few more cards to really get our production levels up, 1 black just isn't going to do that much. fortunately we have a bunch of SWS triggers on the stack to draw those cards. moving forward when i say use up X SWS triggers i am referring to step L from phase 1. some of these cards must be gotten to hand during these SWS triggers resolving. we probably could do it all with the SWS triggers on the stack, i'm honestly not sure if its optimum to do so. i've always just figured id use them up get what i needed and then move on having everything i needed in hand(or top of deck). plus needing to go up and down the stack just to get access to cards seems a bit sloppy. when i refer to these "drawn" cards i'll be assuming we got them in the process of using up our SWS triggers and they have just been sitting in our hand waiting to be used.
A) so before we get too far we are going to need to grab a few more cards. we use up 2 SWS draws and pick up Death's Presence(25) and Mana Reflection(26). we cast both and resolve all FSC triggers on both of them. obviously now our swamp taps for a lot of mana now but we have a few more things we need in place before we get too far. these will be use more during the use of said black mana but that's coming right up. we cast fervor(27), nivmagus elemental(28), sculpting steel(29) copying welding jar(11), and lastly coretapper(30). all of these will be cast off the top of the deck. *a quick note: SS will indeed become MW at some point but that point isn't right now, it will likely be right before we start recasting our mox's from the deck again* all of these will be cast and resolve and be copied by FSC and MW many times when we pay for said triggers.
B) we sacrifice any original creatures/artifacts that are capable of doing so. this should mean we have welding jar(11), tinder wall(3), core tapper(30)(it doesn't do anything but we can target MW to get CT into the yard), sculpting steel(29) and drake familiar(23) in our yard. this will also get us many DP(25) triggers, and we will put all of those counters on RSKs and turn those into mana. i won't mention DP much but any time creatures are dying to non board wipes means we will be using these DP triggers to up our red mana output. these triggers aren't super relevant yet but they do play a more important role later on.
C) we now tap our swamp and make many black mana
D) we now use (B)(B) and (R)(R)(R) to cast Beacon of Unrest(31)(#1) off the top, targeting core tapper. our many TYSs trigger.
E) we let the first TYS trigger resolve and get 3 BU copies(we have only cast 4 ins/sor up to this point) which i will refer to as batch size of 3. we don't want our original BU to fizzle so our targets for the 3 copies will not include CT. the 3 targets will be DF, wall, and jar, resolving in a first->last order.
F) much like step K from phase 1 we do some heavy duty enchantment updating as DF enters the field again. just as before we will use DFs trigger to kill the original putting it back into the yard.
G) once our DF has finished resolving all its triggers we then pull back wall, and jar making many copies of each as they enter. before the next BU/TYS trigger resolves we sac our original jar and wall to get them back into the yard.
H) the next TYS/BU trigger resolves and we get another batch. we repeat the targeting and processing of this batch just like steps E-G. we will repeat these processes for each BU/TYS trigger that creates a new batch. once we are down to our final batch before we would resolve our original BU targeting the CT we will use our very last DF trigger to update the number of TYS in play. then our original BU resolves and shuffles back to the top of the library.
I) we then loop back to step D and repeat steps D-H but with a batch size of 4 this time and a much higher TYS count. with a batch count of 4 we add SS(29)(copying jar) to the recycling regiment. now once the group has been processed we again loop back to D and again loop again using up another (B)(B) in the process and upping our batch count to 5. at batch counts exceeding 4 we have more BU copies per batch than we can use(in this current set up anyway). the excess copies we will be eating with our NME(28) so they don't just go completely to waste.
J) so we will use up all of our black mana in groups of 2 by processing D-I many many times. as we get into using up our final batch from our final 2 black mana we will need to prepare for the next part of the deck, which will be getting and then using green mana. to prepare for this we will make sure we will use our last 2 DF triggers to update our TYS as usual but then also update our MR as well.
so D-J is how we process our black mana when we can make it. now though, we are out of black mana, so how do we get more? well we are going to make a bit of green mana and then use that to make a lot of black and then process that black mana just as we have already demonstrated. so the first thing we are going to do to make more black mana is actually just use 2 cards and get a 2nd black mana burst before actually needing to use up any green mana.
K) we will use up 3 SWS triggers to draw Genju of the fens(32), Kaya's Ghostform(33) and ??????(34).
L) we cast genju on our swamp, then pay (R)(R) to animate the swamp, then cast KGF also onto the swamp. we then sac the animated swamp to kykar(animating via genju turns the swamp into a spirit, how convenient) to make (R). now some triggers need to happen. the genju will end up back in our hand, and the swamp will end up back in play, but KGF will stay in our yard. we then tap our swamp again and make another batch of black mana. we will process this batch of mana just as we did previously in steps D-J. also as before as we come down to the end of this whole process we will making sure to update TYS and MR right at the very end to have them as updated as possible leading into making green mana.
M) so now we will finally tap our mox emerald token that's still untapped we made way back in step E of phase 1. this will make a large amount of green mana.
N) now we will cast Dowsing Shaman(34) from hand. it will enter and we will get many FSC triggers. we will respond by paying (R)(R)(G) and tapping our original D-sham, targeting KGF in our graveyard. this will bring KGF back to hand.
O) still responding to our D-sham/FSC triggers we will repeat the first part of step L. this will get us back to having genju in hand, KGF in yard, and a bunch more black mana again. we then repeat the 2nd half of step L and process all that black mana as we did before using up 2 per cycle.
P) now we have used up our original D-sham activation up but we still have green mana to spend. we now pay for 1 of the D-sham/FSC triggers we left on the stack. because we have greatly updated our DS count since we made our green mana we should make more D-sham's than we have green mana to spend even from just resolving 1 D-sham/FSC trigger.
Q) we now repeat step N(this time we aren't casting the D-sham, but functionally we are acting similarly as we are still responding to FSC triggers)and step O. this manner of processing is how we turn 1 green into many black. any time we get access to black mana we immediately process all of it as seen earlier. we then use up 1 green to restart that process all over again.
so again i think this is a good spot to stop. the using of white mana to make green is a much more powerful(and complicated) process. also getting access to white changes how we use our black mana. we only need 2 white mana once to introduce this change but it changes things quite a bit. between the complexity of the white->green and then the further complication of using black mana just feels like i'm going to call that whole process phase 3. just as a note we will leave this phase in an attempt to go up to making white mana, but we will need to have at least (G)(G)(G)(G)(B)(B) floating.
full list so far w/ additions noted at bottom
1 mox emerald
2 mox pearl
3 tinder wall
4 chaos warp(#1)
5 kykar, wind's fury
6 thousand-year storm
7 chaos warp(#2)
8 omniscience
9 doubling season
10 future sight
11 welding jar
12 chrome mox
13 mirrorworks
14 chaos warp(#3)
15 opalescence
16 flameshadow conjuring
17 cathar's crusade
18 swamp
19 runaway steam-kin
20 vedalken orrery
21 painter's servant
22 sumala woodshaper
23 drake familiar
24 God-eternal Rhonas
new 25 Death's Pressence
new 26 Mana Reflection
new 27 Fervor
new 28 NivMagus elemental
new 29 Sculpting Steel
new 30 CoreTapper
new 31 Beacon of unrest(#1)
new 32 Genju of the fens
new 33 Kaya's ghostform
new 34 Dowsing shaman
other notes: yeah i don't think the first part i posted actually does anything too impressive. it's more just showing i can get it up and running and doing it while using cards that have alternative uses later in the deck. also i am going to be using bargain to convert life into draws so not using any life in the set up seems strong. the multiple sources of red mana do serve a purpose. kykar i needed to get up and running and RSK/CC/PS is there to make sure i can have enough to pay for all the FSC triggers as kykar would not be enough on his own. also i can't update the number of kykar. kykar also gives me chaos warp targets and or mana and i need a bit of both early in the set up. also having excess red mana will be quite handy even deeper into the deck so i don't mind if i produce excess red relatively frequently as we will eventually have a use for it. also i'm referencing my post #2363
There being two lines makes much more sense, though I'm still not sure we actually have a problem.
Could you go into a bit more detail of the process from going from, say, two untapped ancestor tokens to three?
J_kibbs:
Your process does make quite a few layers, currently I'd give a very rough and inaccurate guesstimate at between x->x->10 and x->x->60.
And just guessing at the rest of the deck assuming similar card efficiency can get you to between x->x->20 and x->x->120.
Some of your card choices are still a bit strange to me, Flameshadow conjuring seems a lot worse than dual nature if you have haste from a fervor anyway. (dual nature's bad triggers aren't as bad as they seem [I think there's a post kinda early in this thread that has the line]). (Or just not have fervor and save a card slot)
Nivmagus Elemental and Death's Presence don't seem to be doing anything yet? They kinda give you more red mana? But you have enough of that anyway. They help with keeping power on the board to swing with, but their effect is negligible compared to the number of creatures and enchantments you can swing with.