Yeah if we could get it for free, sure, but its sandwiched between two better combos, so it wouldn't affect the approximation? we want as many of our combos as possible to be below the hyperstage transition, instead of above it.
basically the structure was:
BB
Stage
transition/hyperstage
Stage
layers (7?)
which was approximated to something like BB_w^2+w+7(x)
Compared to:
BB
Transition/hyperstage
stage
layers (>8, probably)
which would be something like BB_w^2+w+8(x) right?
I might be wrong though, these structures are complicated.
(Also we'd still get several layers worth of BB calcs every time, as each copy of Starlight gives us more and more life.)
Edit: and also, since our opponents life is a dead resource in my current outline, perhaps there's a way to make the life totals into a stage?
Edit: Hmm, thinking about it more, I'm second guessing myself. We might need that stage to make the hyperstage powerful enough or its just an awkward stage.
It's been a while since I looked at the deck, but IIRC the first stage was part of the hyperstage - each hyperstage has a stage part and a hyperstage part, a megastage has a stage part, a hyperstage part, and a megastage part, etc. I don't recall seeing a deck with an unrelated stage at the beginning; that would indeed be wasteful.
Street wraith is another creature that we can use from our hand
Edit: Ok so I have:
1: Use 3 colorless mana to buyback invulnerability to increase our storm count X.
2: Spend 3 life to cast any of our instants (via Army of the Damned+Talisman of Hierarchy)
2a: Setup a computation with artificial evolution/mirrorweave/arcbond/dowsing dagger
2b: Bounce artifacts/enchantments/creatures with cowardice and artificial evolution
2b+: Get X copies of artifacts/enchantments/creatures with dual nature - Trigger to regain flash is here
2c: Pull from eternity anything exiled into our graveyard
3: Trigger a computation with Desolation Giant and an animated goblin boom keg losing flash
3a-...: Turing machine/Waterfall model rules, we have no decisions here.
3zzz: Reap an output of BB(X) colorless mana.
Ghost-Lit Redeemer life stage:
4:cast the spirit from hand for BBM triggers
5:resolve a BBM trigger to move it from the graveyard to play
6:use 3 life and 2b to return it to hand
7:channel it for +3 life (talisman pings us 1 for the white)
but because the spirit goes straight to the graveyard, we don't need to get it out of exile ever, and so the last step from the R stage with the ape is not the same...
8:use a red and 2c to pull from eternity it back to the graveyard
8:use a 3 life to pull from eternity it back to the graveyard
Invulnerability allows us to prevent damage from the Talisman of Hierarchy. So we either need a different buyback spell, or something that makes us pay life for mana rather than deal damage.
I'm not sure that not needing to get the spirit out of exile is a problem? We still need 3 life to return it to hand from the battlefield.
Also Chameleon blur would prevent damage too but since the talisman is a mana ability we cant flash March of the Machines in between when we tap it and take the damage, so they have summoning sickness.
Edit: Spell burst doesnt look like it works, we need to be able to recast a 0 cmc spell a lot to have targets, and therefore need to get it out of the gy a lot. But we also have black lotus, which we don't want to be able to get back.
the pacts (summoner's pact) are closer but we'd still need to recast them...
We could keep a copy of a Summoner's Pact on the stack when we cast a sorcery, and make it uncounterable with Allosaurus Shepherd so it can be repeatedly targeted with many Spell Bursts. Or if the activated ability is an issue then a 0cmc creature + one of the numerous "creatures can't be countered" cards.
And most importantly: Sphinx of the second sun gives us something we've never had: additional entire beginning phases. (Interestingly, we do not have a draw step, as it is still the first turn see: comp rules 103.7a and Savor the Moment skipping all untap steps)
Additional untaps and upkeeps opens up a ton of cards that were useless before. Especially as we can easily get extra combats and postcombat mains too.
Some very interesting cards! I keep forgetting that we switched away from using combats to do our computations, so we have combat phases available now for layers.
I can hardly think of how many cards I passed over because we needed one or more upkeep steps. Certainly a lot of cards to go over for sure. Those include suspend and saga cards, of course. Is Mirror Universe a possibility? Of course, Worldfire keeps setting opponent's life to 1, so it doesn't look like we can have a later opponent life layer. But, we can have a later opponent life stage, since we can process the hyperstage only when the opponent is at 1 life - if we can figure out how to make an opponent life stage work, that is.
So, I'm trying to understand FortyTwo's latest setup - it looks like we spend 3 life in both steps 2 and 6, and only get 3 life back in 7? Or are 2 and 6 somehow folded into one?
One problem we have in terms of adding additional stages, is the presence of Cowardice. Having Cowardice means that we can bounce any creature cheaply by triggering Arcbond or Artificial Evolution. The "simple method" for additional mana stages was to use Bloodbond March as one set of abilities, and copies of something that bounces the creature as the other set. (Or Psychic Battle / Grip of Chaos triggers) So bouncing for cheap messes this up. Looks like there are two ways to go: Either find other ways to make additional stages that aren't restricted by bouncing, or get rid of Cowardice.
Of course, without Cowardice, we are restricted to using abilities or spells that specically bounce, rather than just have anything that targets. For white, Aegis Automaton is pretty nice. For blue, there are quite a few possibilities; Escape Routes seems pretty nice, since it is not a native blue creature. If we go with Chrome Mox, and use a blue creature with a blue activated ability that bounces, we are forced to use that blue creature for Chrome Mox. In particular, we won't be able to use a blue creature with protection from some other color. For green, there is Temur Sabertooth, and Kogla, the Titan Ape. Both of these are native green creatures unfortunately; Kogla targets, while Temur does not. For red, there is Ogre Savant. Again we have a native red creature without protection, and also we have to use blue mana, so we can't save blue mana for later if we use Ogre Savant. I wasn't able to find anything that used black mana to bounce. Bane Alley Broker does the exile and return thing, but I don't think that works.
So, we could start with Kogla for green, or Ogre Savant for red, since neither of those have protection. Ogre Savant eliminates blue though, whereas with Kogla we can transition to Escape Routes, bouncing Cerulean Wyvern (turned black by Dralnu's Crusade). Then we can go to Aegis Automaton, bouncing Guardian of the Guildpact. So that's three possible colors, although I think we probably have to use the first for the primary stage.
Edit: Oh wait, I just noticed that Kogla fights upon entering the battlefield, meaning we can't use it. Phooey. So we can go with either blue to white or red to white, only two colors. Too bad that Dralnu's Crusade turns everything black.
With False Dawn, Alena can essentially tap for any colour. So we tap Alena for X mana, where X is Heroes' Bane's power. Normally we could use 4*X mana to get the power of Heroes' Bane from X to 2^X. Now we instead use 2GG to add X +1/+1 counters, then switch Heroes' Bane into Workhorse for 2U. Now we can remove 4 of the +1/+1 counters to double the power with Wine of Blood and Iron.
So essentially with 2 Doubling Seasons out, we can pump Heroes' Bane from X to 2^X for the cost of GGUU. Since tapping Alena adds X mana, would every tap of an Alena add one layer?
@Ancalagon91: Nah, Heroes' Bane can spend mana to go from X to 2^X (Layer 1), and tapping Alena gets X mana so that we can perform the previous combo on the order of X times, so we go from X to 2^^X. (Layer 2)
@jfb: Aw yeah, Cogwork Assembler gives haste - and there's no chance of avoiding artifact creatures, since Cogwork Assembler is one.
We could conceivably switch out from Goblin Boom Keg to Soulblast, but then we don't have to destroy our noncreature artifacts, and we could sacrifice Coat of Arms during the computation.
Lithoform Engine certainly looks bad, being able to copy Worldpurge or Starlight whenever we can recycle the engine, or the triggered abilities from higher up stages or layers.
I think Retract works as we don't have any artifacts during the computation, We would need to be a bit tricky with flash and the dual nature triggers but it seems possible? (steel sabotage can bounce their coat of arms during a computation)
Maybe a flicker effect? like Cloudshift? Doesn't look like there's one for just artifacts though.
Edit: Hmm... Primal Vigor doesn't seem to go infinite, it's just something that we might not necessarily want during the computation. But, we can just let them die I guess? So something to keep in mind if we need help getting off the ground.
Edit: Pardon me for forgetting - what is needed in terms of our creatures to mess up the computation? Is one Xathrid Necromancer enough? If so (and I'm fearing that it is), then it looks like we just can't have haste at all then. Which is too bad, because I had a pretty good idea for how to make a creature stage, which would be very nice, since we could use something like Devastation for our hyperstage destruction rather than Worldpurge or Worldfire, freeing up some things, and giving a lot more potential to the final layers. But without haste, a creature stage looks like a nonstarter. Unfortunately, Thousand-Year Elixir is problematic with it's ability to untap.
Is having one Xathrid Necromancer under our control a definite nono?
Primal vigor seems safe as we cant change the number of them during the computation.
For the current setup for computation we need the boardstate after resolving Desolation Giant's trigger to be:
Us:
Any of our enchantments, specifically at least onemana echos, and notably not Starfield of Nyx to animate them)
None of our artifacts (really just no flash from Vedalken Orrery) Desolation Giant as our only creature card (I think vanilla tokens are fine)
In hand:
buyback card for storm, and the Spirit we can use from our hand
None of: Arcbond, Artificial Evolution, Mirrorweave, these all need to be cast multiple times in the setup so we should be safe.
Opponent's board: Coat of armsx3 (more works too, but the math is easier with the same number as Goblin boom keg deals)
hacked Dralnu's crusade x150
hacked Xathrid Necromancer x X^^^X
hacked plants x X^^^X (I think these are X^^X? but just using a higher estimate to be safe)
Gives us BB(X) colorless mana which we convert into storm with the buyback spell.
We can have necromancers in play right before the trigger then make the zombie before the boom keg kicks the computation off, but I don't see how that could possibly alter the computation after it started.
We just absolutely can not have a necromancer alive during the computation.
Using a wrath effect seems interesting but I'm not sure if it works for a hyperstage as we can keep flash through it, so Akroma's Vengeance or Jokulhaups to also destroy artifacts for sure might be better.
Yeah, Jokulhaups looks good, but it looks like we won't be able to have a creature stage. So, with the goal of getting at least one additional stage in, I suppose we can focus on making a Worldfire deck without Cowardice.
An alternative to Desolation Giant / Goblin Boom Keg is to use Soulblast, which can damage an opponent's creatures, but requires that we sacrifice ours. This doesn't require that we eliminate Vedalken Orrery, so we replace it with Tidal Barracuda. We can then repeat the computation by recycling Tidal Barracuda and our instants.
With Cowardice gone, maybe trying to make a stage with Ghost-Lit Redeemer and Bloodbond March isn't the way to go. I was thinking about stages more along the lines of our recent Standard decks. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth still seems useful though. So, I was thinking of using Morgue Theft and Chainer's Edict as our two alternating spells. Yes, they have different amounts of black mana required for flashback, translating to 2 and 4 life spent, but I think if we counter that with something that gains us 3 life, it should work out.
Unfortunately, Soulblast is enough to get rid of a creature without needing Chainer's Edict. So, I thought about just having Morgue Theft as our costly spell. So, we would be alternating Morgue Theft and Soulblast copies, costing 2 life and 0 life respectively; Soulblast could be triggered by casting Morgue Theft via Spellweaver Volute. I believe if we counterbalance with a single life gain (Tarpan lookks like a possibility) then we would be okay.
I'm not sure if we need to cast all 5 of our instants each time around, but I included 4 copies of Mirrormade just to be safe. Also, unless I am missing something, Spell Burst / Root Sliver / 0 CMC creature can be replaced by Haze of Rage.
Unfortunately, after all this work to get rid of Worldpurge and Cowardice, we still can't add any additional stages, thanks to Morgue Theft. We can't get around it with protection, since Morgue Theft targets cards in the graveyard. Still, switching from Worldpurge to Worldfire could potentially mean more layers, since there were some mana layers lost due to Worldpurge. (Although I guess we lose life layers in exchange; we can check out both versions I guess.) However, we don't need to remove Cowardice for that. So, if we give up on the additional stages, we can consider Cowardice decks again.
Of course, we still haven't thought really hard about different kinds of additional stages. But, the ones we have been using have been through spending mana on various instants/sorceries, and the use of Spellweaver Volute and Spellweaver Helix means that we have the ability to casts instants and sorceries without paying their mana costs. I thought about Stakfish's stage using Muldothra, the Gravetide as well, but that stage also used bouncing as a restriction.
Can we make the deck without creature bounce/retrieval like Morgue Theft?
Haze of Rage is a sorcery and can thus call Soulblast to start a computation too cheaply.
(Invulnerability is fine when we're not relying on taking damage to be a cost for something[/c])
basically the structure was:
BB
Stage
transition/hyperstage
Stage
layers (7?)
which was approximated to something like BB_w^2+w+7(x)
Compared to:
BB
Transition/hyperstage
stage
layers (>8, probably)
which would be something like BB_w^2+w+8(x) right?
I might be wrong though, these structures are complicated.
(Also we'd still get several layers worth of BB calcs every time, as each copy of Starlight gives us more and more life.)
Edit: and also, since our opponents life is a dead resource in my current outline, perhaps there's a way to make the life totals into a stage?
Edit: Hmm, thinking about it more, I'm second guessing myself. We might need that stage to make the hyperstage powerful enough or its just an awkward stage.
So something like Bartered cow gets us close when paired with flowstone flood.
while I like the bartered cow flowstone flood interaction, it seems likely to go infinite from the cow's death trigger.
So something like: Ghost-Lit redeemer Army of the Damned and Talisman of Hierarchy? Though some way to use the opponent's life would be nice.
Street wraith is another creature that we can use from our hand
Edit: Ok so I have:
1: Use 3 colorless mana to buyback invulnerability to increase our storm count X.
2: Spend 3 life to cast any of our instants (via Army of the Damned+Talisman of Hierarchy)
2a: Setup a computation with artificial evolution/mirrorweave/arcbond/dowsing dagger
2b: Bounce artifacts/enchantments/creatures with cowardice and artificial evolution
2b+: Get X copies of artifacts/enchantments/creatures with dual nature - Trigger to regain flash is here
2c: Pull from eternity anything exiled into our graveyard
3: Trigger a computation with Desolation Giant and an animated goblin boom keg losing flash
3a-...: Turing machine/Waterfall model rules, we have no decisions here.
3zzz: Reap an output of BB(X) colorless mana.
Ghost-Lit Redeemer life stage:
4:cast the spirit from hand for BBM triggers
5:resolve a BBM trigger to move it from the graveyard to play
6:use 3 life and 2b to return it to hand
7:channel it for +3 life (talisman pings us 1 for the white)
but because the spirit goes straight to the graveyard, we don't need to get it out of exile ever, and so the last step from the R stage with the ape is not the same...
8:use a red and 2c to pull from eternity it back to the graveyard
8:use a 3 life to pull from eternity it back to the graveyard
So this is mostly working but still not.
Edit: Another interesting possibility is the cycle of suspend x creatures with Rift Elemental notably Roiling Horror and/or Detritivore (its a shame fury charm is a shatter)
I'm not sure that not needing to get the spirit out of exile is a problem? We still need 3 life to return it to hand from the battlefield.
As to the Invulnerability/Talisman issue one of them does need to be replaced.
Allay(oops not safe actually) or Spell burst (tricky to have targets...)? Whispers of the Muse (though we really want to save card draw...)? or switch the talisman to K'rrik, son of Yawgmoth or Carnival of Souls + white mana battery?Also Chameleon blur would prevent damage too but since the talisman is a mana ability we cant flash March of the Machines in between when we tap it and take the damage, so they have summoning sickness.
Edit: Spell burst doesnt look like it works, we need to be able to recast a 0 cmc spell a lot to have targets, and therefore need to get it out of the gy a lot. But we also have black lotus, which we don't want to be able to get back.
the pacts (summoner's pact) are closer but we'd still need to recast them...
Haakon, stromgald scourge lets us recast creatures like Endless One or kobolds of kher keep from the yard to be able to counter them, but seems dangerous.
Summoner's pact might also not be an effect we want to have a lot of access to, Pact of the Titan is safer. (but not green...)
Probably safer to go with something like root sliver + ornithopter or kobolds of Kher Keep edit: obviously Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh is the superior card here.
Edit: while it would be nice to loop in opponent's life in someway here, that doesn't seem possible.
So next we'd use some flashback card we have multiple copies of to trigger spellweaver helix to cast Worldfire and Starlight (using Wormfang Behemoth to hide our cards)
That leaves us with Green/Blue/Red as viable mana stages. with our life/white/black already being used. (and opponent's life getting set to 1 a lot)
Edit: Commander legends gives us a few more interesting options:
Slurrk, All-ingesting and Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer are another breed of coat of arms/hyngry lynx style engine cards
Alena, Kessig Trapper taps for a lot of red
And most importantly:
Sphinx of the second sun gives us something we've never had: additional entire beginning phases. (Interestingly, we do not have a draw step, as it is still the first turn see: comp rules 103.7a and Savor the Moment skipping all untap steps)
Additional untaps and upkeeps opens up a ton of cards that were useless before. Especially as we can easily get extra combats and postcombat mains too.
I can hardly think of how many cards I passed over because we needed one or more upkeep steps. Certainly a lot of cards to go over for sure. Those include suspend and saga cards, of course. Is Mirror Universe a possibility? Of course, Worldfire keeps setting opponent's life to 1, so it doesn't look like we can have a later opponent life layer. But, we can have a later opponent life stage, since we can process the hyperstage only when the opponent is at 1 life - if we can figure out how to make an opponent life stage work, that is.
What's the deck looking like now?
It looks like we have two viable strategies depending on if we want to go with worldpurge or worldfire
Worldpurge:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
9 Desolation Giant
10 March of the Machines
11 Goblin Boom Keg
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Satyr's Cunning
22 Mana Echoes
23 Stern Proctor
24 Simian Spirit Guide
25 Spellweaver Helix
26 Seismic Spike
27 Worldpurge
28 Gerrard's Verdict
29 Flash of Defiance
30 Flash of Defiance
31 Flash of Defiance
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Drownyard Temple
34 Wormfang Behemoth
36 Show and Tell
37 Omniscience
38 Words of Wisdom
39 Chameleon Blur
40 Leyline of Punishment
Resources used:
- Colorless mana
- Red mana
- Life
Resources reset:
- Floating mana
Worldfire (I never had a decklist for the whole thing but something like):
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
9 Desolation Giant
10 March of the Machines
11 Goblin Boom Keg
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Spell burst
21 Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh
22 Root sliver
23 Mana Echoes
24 Talisman of hierarchy
25 Army of the Damned
26 Stern Proctor
27 Ghost-lit redeemer
28 Spellweaver Helix
29 Restore
30 Worldfire
31 Starlight
32 Flashback spell
33 Flashback spell
34 Flashback spell
35 Flashback spell
36 land
37 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Show and Tell
40 Omniscience
41 Words of Wisdom
42 Chameleon Blur
43 Leyline of Punishment
Resources used:
- Colorless mana
- White and black mana
- Life
Resources reset:
- life totals
One problem we have in terms of adding additional stages, is the presence of Cowardice. Having Cowardice means that we can bounce any creature cheaply by triggering Arcbond or Artificial Evolution. The "simple method" for additional mana stages was to use Bloodbond March as one set of abilities, and copies of something that bounces the creature as the other set. (Or Psychic Battle / Grip of Chaos triggers) So bouncing for cheap messes this up. Looks like there are two ways to go: Either find other ways to make additional stages that aren't restricted by bouncing, or get rid of Cowardice.
Of course, without Cowardice, we are restricted to using abilities or spells that specically bounce, rather than just have anything that targets. For white, Aegis Automaton is pretty nice. For blue, there are quite a few possibilities; Escape Routes seems pretty nice, since it is not a native blue creature. If we go with Chrome Mox, and use a blue creature with a blue activated ability that bounces, we are forced to use that blue creature for Chrome Mox. In particular, we won't be able to use a blue creature with protection from some other color. For green, there is Temur Sabertooth, and Kogla, the Titan Ape. Both of these are native green creatures unfortunately; Kogla targets, while Temur does not. For red, there is Ogre Savant. Again we have a native red creature without protection, and also we have to use blue mana, so we can't save blue mana for later if we use Ogre Savant. I wasn't able to find anything that used black mana to bounce. Bane Alley Broker does the exile and return thing, but I don't think that works.
So, we could start with Kogla for green, or Ogre Savant for red, since neither of those have protection. Ogre Savant eliminates blue though, whereas with Kogla we can transition to Escape Routes, bouncing Cerulean Wyvern (turned black by Dralnu's Crusade). Then we can go to Aegis Automaton, bouncing Guardian of the Guildpact. So that's three possible colors, although I think we probably have to use the first for the primary stage.
Edit: Oh wait, I just noticed that Kogla fights upon entering the battlefield, meaning we can't use it. Phooey. So we can go with either blue to white or red to white, only two colors. Too bad that Dralnu's Crusade turns everything black.
If it's just preparation for computations though, sorceries should be okay?
Edit: Hmmm, Cogwork Assembler should be okay? That would certainly take care of getting artifacts.
Does Lithoform Engine cause any fundamental issues?
There's also Ingenuity Engine, provided cascade isn't a problem.
edit: Cogwork Assembler gives haste which is bad as it can lead to combat damage.
edit 2: Ingenuity Engine can sacrifice Goblin Boom Keg
It's been a while, didn't have much time due to work but I possibly discovered a neat interaction the other day:
Cards used are Alena, Kessig Trapper, Heroes' Bane, False Dawn, Workhorse, Wine of Blood and Iron, Shapesharer and something to turn all creatures into Shapeshifters.
With False Dawn, Alena can essentially tap for any colour. So we tap Alena for X mana, where X is Heroes' Bane's power. Normally we could use 4*X mana to get the power of Heroes' Bane from X to 2^X. Now we instead use 2GG to add X +1/+1 counters, then switch Heroes' Bane into Workhorse for 2U. Now we can remove 4 of the +1/+1 counters to double the power with Wine of Blood and Iron.
So essentially with 2 Doubling Seasons out, we can pump Heroes' Bane from X to 2^X for the cost of GGUU. Since tapping Alena adds X mana, would every tap of an Alena add one layer?
@jfb: Aw yeah, Cogwork Assembler gives haste - and there's no chance of avoiding artifact creatures, since Cogwork Assembler is one.
We could conceivably switch out from Goblin Boom Keg to Soulblast, but then we don't have to destroy our noncreature artifacts, and we could sacrifice Coat of Arms during the computation.
Lithoform Engine certainly looks bad, being able to copy Worldpurge or Starlight whenever we can recycle the engine, or the triggered abilities from higher up stages or layers.
What about Eldrazi Displacer blinking a Stern Proctor?
I recall we had a creature token based stage at some point which involved that
I think Retract works as we don't have any artifacts during the computation, We would need to be a bit tricky with flash and the dual nature triggers but it seems possible? (steel sabotage can bounce their coat of arms during a computation)
Maybe a flicker effect? like Cloudshift? Doesn't look like there's one for just artifacts though.
uses an extra card slot but cut the earthly bond + Domineer looks like it works (+ Crystal chimes)
If this is about just getting enough tokens, what about the ol' Rite of Replication, with Primal Vigor if necessary? Dowsing Dagger can be replaced by Hunted Phantasm, unless there is a reason not to.
Edit: Oh wait, Primal Vigor can mess with the computation. But Rite of Replication and Hunted Phantasm seem pretty good.
Edit: Hmm... Primal Vigor doesn't seem to go infinite, it's just something that we might not necessarily want during the computation. But, we can just let them die I guess? So something to keep in mind if we need help getting off the ground.
Edit: Pardon me for forgetting - what is needed in terms of our creatures to mess up the computation? Is one Xathrid Necromancer enough? If so (and I'm fearing that it is), then it looks like we just can't have haste at all then. Which is too bad, because I had a pretty good idea for how to make a creature stage, which would be very nice, since we could use something like Devastation for our hyperstage destruction rather than Worldpurge or Worldfire, freeing up some things, and giving a lot more potential to the final layers. But without haste, a creature stage looks like a nonstarter. Unfortunately, Thousand-Year Elixir is problematic with it's ability to untap.
Is having one Xathrid Necromancer under our control a definite nono?
For the current setup for computation we need the boardstate after resolving Desolation Giant's trigger to be:
Us:
Any of our enchantments, specifically at least onemana echos, and notably not Starfield of Nyx to animate them)
None of our artifacts (really just no flash from Vedalken Orrery)
Desolation Giant as our only creature card (I think vanilla tokens are fine)
In hand:
buyback card for storm, and the Spirit we can use from our hand
None of: Arcbond, Artificial Evolution, Mirrorweave, these all need to be cast multiple times in the setup so we should be safe.
Opponent's board:
Coat of armsx3 (more works too, but the math is easier with the same number as Goblin boom keg deals)
hacked Dralnu's crusade x150
hacked Xathrid Necromancer x X^^^X
hacked plants x X^^^X (I think these are X^^X? but just using a higher estimate to be safe)
Gives us BB(X) colorless mana which we convert into storm with the buyback spell.
We can have necromancers in play right before the trigger then make the zombie before the boom keg kicks the computation off, but I don't see how that could possibly alter the computation after it started.
We just absolutely can not have a necromancer alive during the computation.
Using a wrath effect seems interesting but I'm not sure if it works for a hyperstage as we can keep flash through it, so Akroma's Vengeance or Jokulhaups to also destroy artifacts for sure might be better.
An alternative to Desolation Giant / Goblin Boom Keg is to use Soulblast, which can damage an opponent's creatures, but requires that we sacrifice ours. This doesn't require that we eliminate Vedalken Orrery, so we replace it with Tidal Barracuda. We can then repeat the computation by recycling Tidal Barracuda and our instants.
With Cowardice gone, maybe trying to make a stage with Ghost-Lit Redeemer and Bloodbond March isn't the way to go. I was thinking about stages more along the lines of our recent Standard decks. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth still seems useful though. So, I was thinking of using Morgue Theft and Chainer's Edict as our two alternating spells. Yes, they have different amounts of black mana required for flashback, translating to 2 and 4 life spent, but I think if we counter that with something that gains us 3 life, it should work out.
Unfortunately, Soulblast is enough to get rid of a creature without needing Chainer's Edict. So, I thought about just having Morgue Theft as our costly spell. So, we would be alternating Morgue Theft and Soulblast copies, costing 2 life and 0 life respectively; Soulblast could be triggered by casting Morgue Theft via Spellweaver Volute. I believe if we counterbalance with a single life gain (Tarpan lookks like a possibility) then we would be okay.
So, a preliminary decklist would be:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
9 Soulblast
10 Tidal Barracuda
12 Mirrormade
13 Mirrormade
14 Mirrormade
15 Mirrormade
16 Pull from Eternity
17 Thousand-Year Storm
18 Haze of Rage
19 Mana Echoes
20 Morgue Theft
21 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
22 Tarpan
24 Worldfire
25 Starlight
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Chatter of the Squirrel
28 Panharmonicon
29 Titania, Protector of Argoth
30 Wormfang Behemoth
31 Stern Proctor
I'm not sure if we need to cast all 5 of our instants each time around, but I included 4 copies of Mirrormade just to be safe. Also, unless I am missing something, Spell Burst / Root Sliver / 0 CMC creature can be replaced by Haze of Rage.
Unfortunately, after all this work to get rid of Worldpurge and Cowardice, we still can't add any additional stages, thanks to Morgue Theft. We can't get around it with protection, since Morgue Theft targets cards in the graveyard. Still, switching from Worldpurge to Worldfire could potentially mean more layers, since there were some mana layers lost due to Worldpurge. (Although I guess we lose life layers in exchange; we can check out both versions I guess.) However, we don't need to remove Cowardice for that. So, if we give up on the additional stages, we can consider Cowardice decks again.
Of course, we still haven't thought really hard about different kinds of additional stages. But, the ones we have been using have been through spending mana on various instants/sorceries, and the use of Spellweaver Volute and Spellweaver Helix means that we have the ability to casts instants and sorceries without paying their mana costs. I thought about Stakfish's stage using Muldothra, the Gravetide as well, but that stage also used bouncing as a restriction.
Can we make the deck without creature bounce/retrieval like Morgue Theft?
Haze of Rage is a sorcery and can thus call Soulblast to start a computation too cheaply.
(Invulnerability is fine when we're not relying on taking damage to be a cost for something[/c])