Hmm, the problem with Talisman of Resilience is that it allows us to convert life into mana, and the mana can be carried down below a hyperstage transition. That's why K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is so nice; unfortunately, I don't see how to make it work with Nihilistic Glee.
I was thinking about giving the Faith of the Devoted deck another shot. Last time we had something like:
It seems like we have better potential for layers here. The problem we had was not being able to move the Mirrormades around fast enough. Perhaps we could give it another think?
Hmm, yeah smuggling green through the transition is definitely possible with my line. So that doesn't work. (and probably moots all of the old Ghost-lit redeemer versions too.)
I think that deck also needed darksteel citadel to keep coat of arms alive during computation (march is needed so our boom-keg dies). I dont remember the exact problem with the mirrormades there, but it seems very difficult to have them be all the enchantment we need them to be at the correct times. Bloodbond March and Spellweaver Volute for sure. Also, casting Army of the Damned doesn't seem to actually be able to convert into many computations as there's no workaround for retract.
Another thought I had was urborg syphon-mage which while unfortunately needing a lot of haste, also needs to actually drain the life to gain it, so we'd need the vault skirgescarecrow version?
The only other card that piqued my interest is street wraith, which can be cycled to cast beacon of creation or similar but getting the street wraith back is tricky, Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed? seems like it goes infinite.
Hmm - perhaps it is possible to take care of switching to Bloodbond March and Spellweaver Volute by adding one of each? I think that is all we actually need for them to work. But, then we also need to add a workaround for Retract (I suppose Prophet of Kruphix and Phyrexian Metamorph can work, since we can't copy enchantments, and we can't discard aribtrary cards.). Adding in Darksteel Forge, that's five cards we need, too many in all likelihood.
Ooh, Urborg, Syphon-Mage looks interesting! Unfortunately, both Marchesa's Smuggler and Break Through the Line require expensive colors. Perhaps we could switch out red mana as the hyperstage resource for green? But, that could be difficult with Recoup apparently needed - in particular, it can give Worldfire flashback for cheap. Perhaps we can allow Worldfire to be cheap, but have Restore require the hyperstage transition?
I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to use Thousand-Year Elixir and give up untapping creatures. The question is, what do we pair this with in terms of paying life? Acorn Harvest costs 3 life, so it doesn't quite work with gaining 2 life. We could use the Spitting Image / Glowspore Shaman combo, but that moots card draw, which is the reason we want to go away from Nihilistic Glee in the first place. Same for Street Wraith I guess.
Oh, here's an idea: Remove Mirror Gallery. We still get one copy of Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, which gives us two copies of the activated ability of Aegis Automaton. That's good enough for a stage, since we can have lots of copies of Bloodbond March. That will eliminate getting copies of artifact abilities and having multiple legendary permanents, but let's see where this goes. With Mirror Gallery gone, we can add Alhammarret's Archive and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. We then pay two life to gain four life. We can now also use K'rrik for the triggering sorcery. (I guess Lingering Souls) This means we don't get Spitting Image, so we are stuck with the cumbersome Masterwork of Ingenuity combo.
Interesting, that does look promising, and saves green mana for later too. (though molderhulk is green...)
With only the two bounces from Aegis automaton, we would also need some way to retarget, as the original will fizzle.
Regardless, I don't think that ending is worth all of those layers. Consecrated Sphinx doesn't seem to be doing much actually.
(edit: also you are missing the Alhammarret's Archive from that decklist)
edit 2:
Its not all bad news: I think Dack Fayden's emblem lets us steal back flash from a spellweaver volute trigger but not from invulnerability. Saving us from the 3 card bludgeon brawl combo.
What I would like to do would be to get rid of Thousand-Year Elixir, so that we could transition from Widespread Panic to Jester's Mask and then the usual ending layers, getting potentially 9 layers. So, I'm thinking about how we can switch our hyperstage resource from red to green. The only problem seems to be how we cast Distorting Wake or Stolen by the Fae. It looks like most cards that can allow other cards to be cast, either allow them to be cast immediately without paying their mana cost, or allow them to be cast while paying their mana cost some time in the future. I think what I would like would be a card that allows a sorcery to be cast immediately, while still allowing us to pay the mana cost. Are there any cards like that?
I guess we can have hasted creatures, if the only way to deal damage is the single combat phase that we have. But, I'm not sure what to transition Jester's Mask into in that case. I've typically been going to the opponent's library or combat at the end of the sequence; the former is below Jester's Mask, and we can't use the latter if we have hasted creatures.
So here we try to use green to get that 8th layer, but it's pretty inefficient, using 4 cards to get that one layer. (Arcane Sanctum + Animist's Awakening + Uproot, and also saving green to the end means replacing Molderhulk with Restore, which requires putting Panharmonicon back in) The rest of the layer sequence is pretty efficient, but with that green layer it barely fits. (hopefully)
The other deck uses the hasted creatures with just one combat idea:
does that last deck need Precursor Golem over another reality spasm?
swapping sphinx for psychic possession protects us from getting milled, though does short us out of blue creatures...
Yeah, Precursor Golem gives another layer, so it's better than an additional Reality Spasm. And we do need Consecrated Sphinx to take up that blue creature slot. It seems easy enough to put artifacts into the library two at a time, so Consecrated Sphinx should be no trouble.
The first deck doesn't work because the tokens from Rapacious One can be sacrificed in a computation.
The second deck has Brudiclad which can turn damaged creatures into goblin boom keg.
deck 2: Take out Brudiclad, and replace Dual Nature with Minion Reflector. This doesn't save a card though, because we still need another artfact creature.
Edit:
As for some other probably less fruitful ideas, just to explore our options:
Snow mana might still get something useful from Kaldheim, (Frost Augur?)
Sweepers that can't kill Goblin Boom-Keg are fine? eg: Witch's Vengeance, Tivadar's Crusade, whirlwind, Phyrexian scriptures.
With Mirror gallery gone, are there other legends that are useful to be limited to only one copy of?
Hmm yeah, we don't have a good way to keep the nontoken Urborg Syphon-Mage on the battlefield. If we had Spitting Image, we could give the opponent a hasted token copy, and make copies for ourselves. That would be another reason to make Spitting Image work somehow - we would already like it for allowing us to keep Mirror Gallery. Still not quite sure how to make us able to cast Spitting Image at the cost of life though.
Otherwise, we can just switch Minion Reflector back to Dual Nature, and add a universal source of haste like Fervor. That costs us a Reality Spasm, which puts deck 2 in a tie with deck 1 again. Anyone have other ideas for how to give haste to Urborg more efficiently?
I think Break through the line is almost actually cheap enough, as we can Wrong Turn the siphon mage before doing any computation.
The problem is that we'd need to pay an additional R after every Worldfire, which I guess we can do via Graven Cairns? but I don't think we need to pay for haste for anything else and can just build up red that way so this looks like a dead end.
edit: we'd also need to somehow untap the hasted siphon-mage, which is not something we can afford to do cheaply. so this doubly doesn't work.
Oh, deck 2 is actually only 7 layers. I accidentally counted Jester's Mask as a layer, but without Mirror Gallery we don't get a layer from activating an artifact.
I'm trying to think of alternative ways to get Urborg Siphon-Mage to work. We can use Glowsphere Shaman to bring a land from the graveyard to the library, and then we can use Moonlight Bargain to bring it to our hand, without actually drawing. Then, we can discard the land to cast Spitting Image, at the total cost of two life. So that seems like it can work, and Spitting Image allows us to drop Dack Fayden and use Minion Reflector to give Urborg haste. But, we can't use Drafna's Restoration, as that will allow us to fetch Black Lotus relatively cheaply. We could switch to say Nyx Lotus and untap it with Tolarian Academy, but this moots untapping, so we're in much the same boat as if we used Thousand-Year Elixir, and we've mooted green mana as well. So, I'm not quite sure how to start the layers sequence with this.
Previously the reasoning was that if we kept a land in hand through the worldfire transition, then it wasn't in play to get killed, so we'd be down red.
But with deck 1 having Fountain of cho as a second land, that logic no longer holds.
Dack Fayden also gives us 2 more card slots in some of the previous versions, so those might be more competitive too.
Yeah, the The First Iroan Games now has three extra card slots, but I still am not sure what to do with them other than to improve the Reality Spasm part of it.
Edit: Looking at deck 1 again, it doesn't look like we can really get started - we have Blue Sun's Zenith, but we don't have the mana to draw cards from it. (nor for Military Intelligence)
its one more card than the glowspore shaman version, and needs us to stay alive with something other than invulnerability, but sidestepping the masterwork of ingenuity line seems like it saves even more slots.
edit:wrong uncommon golgari creature.
cutting:
Golgari Locket
Acorn Harvest
Bludgeon Brawl
Masterwork of Ingenuity
Sigarda's Aid
Invulnerability
Mountain
for
cartographer
talisman of resilience
Skull of Ramos
Spitting image
whim of volrath (surprisingly actually safe for computation, as the colors of the tokens don't matter at all.)
Lantern-lit graveyard (or any other untapped red land that isn't a mountain, like the pathways, grove of the burnwillows, the fastlands, or hammerheim)
+1 card? (Reality Spasm probably)
I was thinking about giving the Faith of the Devoted deck another shot. Last time we had something like:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Dralnu's Crusade
9 Dralnu's Crusade
10 Mirrormade
11 Mirrormade
12 Desolation Giant
13 Goblin Boom Keg
14 March of the Machines
15 Vedalken Orrery
16 Spellweaver Volute
17 Pull from Eternity
18 Bloodbond March
19 Cephalid Shrine
20 Thousand-Year Storm
21 Invulnerability
22 Mana Echoes
24 Retract
25 Soul Separator
26 Sanctum Plowbeast
27 Faith of the Devoted
28 Army of the Damned
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Rings of Brighthearth
31 Dual Nature
32 Repeated Reverberation
33 Drake Familiar
34 Spellweaver Helix
35 Worldfire
36 Starlight
37 Restore
38 Recoup
39 Recoup
40 Panharmonicon
41 Mountain
42 Wormfang Behemoth
44 Aegis Automaton
45 Guardian of the Guildpact
46 Black Lotus
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Words of Wisdom
50 Chrome Mox
51 Drafna's Restoration
52 Doubling Season
53 Blue Sun's Zenith
54 Consecrated Sphinx
55 Widespread Panic
56 Jester's Mask
57 Awakening
58 Sphinx of the Second Sun
59 World at War
It seems like we have better potential for layers here. The problem we had was not being able to move the Mirrormades around fast enough. Perhaps we could give it another think?
Maybe there's a line with like corrupted zendikon and worldshaper
I think that deck also needed darksteel citadel to keep coat of arms alive during computation (march is needed so our boom-keg dies). I dont remember the exact problem with the mirrormades there, but it seems very difficult to have them be all the enchantment we need them to be at the correct times. Bloodbond March and Spellweaver Volute for sure. Also, casting Army of the Damned doesn't seem to actually be able to convert into many computations as there's no workaround for retract.
Another thought I had was urborg syphon-mage which while unfortunately needing a lot of haste, also needs to actually drain the life to gain it, so we'd need the vault skirge scarecrow version?
The only other card that piqued my interest is street wraith, which can be cycled to cast beacon of creation or similar but getting the street wraith back is tricky, Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed? seems like it goes infinite.
Ooh, Urborg, Syphon-Mage looks interesting! Unfortunately, both Marchesa's Smuggler and Break Through the Line require expensive colors. Perhaps we could switch out red mana as the hyperstage resource for green? But, that could be difficult with Recoup apparently needed - in particular, it can give Worldfire flashback for cheap. Perhaps we can allow Worldfire to be cheap, but have Restore require the hyperstage transition?
I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to use Thousand-Year Elixir and give up untapping creatures. The question is, what do we pair this with in terms of paying life? Acorn Harvest costs 3 life, so it doesn't quite work with gaining 2 life. We could use the Spitting Image / Glowspore Shaman combo, but that moots card draw, which is the reason we want to go away from Nihilistic Glee in the first place. Same for Street Wraith I guess.
Oh, here's an idea: Remove Mirror Gallery. We still get one copy of Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, which gives us two copies of the activated ability of Aegis Automaton. That's good enough for a stage, since we can have lots of copies of Bloodbond March. That will eliminate getting copies of artifact abilities and having multiple legendary permanents, but let's see where this goes. With Mirror Gallery gone, we can add Alhammarret's Archive and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. We then pay two life to gain four life. We can now also use K'rrik for the triggering sorcery. (I guess Lingering Souls) This means we don't get Spitting Image, so we are stuck with the cumbersome Masterwork of Ingenuity combo.
But, it seems like it fits:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Bludgeon Brawl
13 Masterwork of Ingenuity
14 Sigarda's Aid
15 Spellweaver Volute
16 Pull from Eternity
17 Mirrormade
18 Dual Nature
19 Bloodbond March
20 Cephalid Shrine
21 Thousand-Year Storm
22 Invulnerability
23 Mana Echoes
25 Soul Separator
26 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
27 Thousand-Year Elixir
28 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
29 Lingering Souls
30 Drake Familiar
31 Runed Halo
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Gravitic Punch
35 Gravitic Punch
36 Recoup
37 Mountain
38 Molderhulk
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Stolen by the Fae
41 Chrome Mox
42 Aegis Automaton
43 Guardian of the Guildpact
44 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
48 Contraband Kingpin
49 Marchesa's Smuggler
50 Blue Sun's Zenith
51 Consecrated Sphinx
52 Widespread Panic
53 Trail of Mystery
54 Jeskai Infiltrator
55 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
56 World at War
57 Sphinx of Enlightenment
58 Doubling Season
59 Drafna's Restoration
That looks like 8 layers at the end, barring any problems.
With only the two bounces from Aegis automaton, we would also need some way to retarget, as the original will fizzle.
Regardless, I don't think that ending is worth all of those layers. Consecrated Sphinx doesn't seem to be doing much actually.
(edit: also you are missing the Alhammarret's Archive from that decklist)
edit 2:
Its not all bad news: I think Dack Fayden's emblem lets us steal back flash from a spellweaver volute trigger but not from invulnerability. Saving us from the 3 card bludgeon brawl combo.
What I would like to do would be to get rid of Thousand-Year Elixir, so that we could transition from Widespread Panic to Jester's Mask and then the usual ending layers, getting potentially 9 layers. So, I'm thinking about how we can switch our hyperstage resource from red to green. The only problem seems to be how we cast Distorting Wake or Stolen by the Fae. It looks like most cards that can allow other cards to be cast, either allow them to be cast immediately without paying their mana cost, or allow them to be cast while paying their mana cost some time in the future. I think what I would like would be a card that allows a sorcery to be cast immediately, while still allowing us to pay the mana cost. Are there any cards like that?
(edit: Chandra, Torch of Defiance does this too but from the library which is harder to use)
I guess we can have hasted creatures, if the only way to deal damage is the single combat phase that we have. But, I'm not sure what to transition Jester's Mask into in that case. I've typically been going to the opponent's library or combat at the end of the sequence; the former is below Jester's Mask, and we can't use the latter if we have hasted creatures.
Anyway, the idea was to have some way to cast Distorting Wake or Stolen by the Fae without messing with Worldfire, while still using green mana for the hyperstage resource. Then, we can give haste cheaply with Break Through the Line, and we can use Jester's Mask.
I've managed to come up with two decks that hopefully get 8 layers:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Thousand-Year Elixir
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen by the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Marchesa's Smuggler
51 Arcane Sanctum
52 Animist's Awakening
53 Blue Sun's Zenith
54 Dragon Appeasement
55 Rapacious One
56 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
57 World at War
58 Doubling Season
59 Uproot
60 Drafna's Restoration
So here we try to use green to get that 8th layer, but it's pretty inefficient, using 4 cards to get that one layer. (Arcane Sanctum + Animist's Awakening + Uproot, and also saving green to the end means replacing Molderhulk with Restore, which requires putting Panharmonicon back in) The rest of the layer sequence is pretty efficient, but with that green layer it barely fits. (hopefully)
The other deck uses the hasted creatures with just one combat idea:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Moan of the Unhallowed
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Starlight
33 Recoup
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Distorting Wake
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Precursor Golem
51 Blue Sun's Zenith
52 Consecrated Sphinx
53 Widespread Panic
54 Jester's Mask
55 Drafna's Restoration
56 Sphinx of Enlightenment
57 Doubling Season
58 Harness the Storm
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reality Spasm
Again, having more spaces would allow this deck to forge ahead with multiple Reality Spasms.
swapping sphinx for psychic possession protects us from getting milled, though does short us out of blue creatures...
The second deck has Brudiclad which can turn damaged creatures into goblin boom keg.
deck 1: Replace Arcane Sanctum with Fountain of Cho and Amulet of Vigor, replace Dragon Appeasement and Rapacious One with Military Intelligence
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Thousand-Year Elixir
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen by the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Marchesa's Smuggler
51 Fountain of Cho
52 Amulet of Vigor
53 Animist's Awakening
54 Blue Sun's Zenith
55 Military Intelligence
56 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
57 World at War
58 Doubling Season
59 Uproot
60 Drafna's Restoration
deck 2: Take out Brudiclad, and replace Dual Nature with Minion Reflector. This doesn't save a card though, because we still need another artfact creature.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Minion Reflector
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 artifact creature
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Moan of the Unhallowed
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Starlight
33 Recoup
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Distorting Wake
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Precursor Golem
51 Blue Sun's Zenith
52 Consecrated Sphinx
53 Widespread Panic
54 Jester's Mask
55 Drafna's Restoration
56 Sphinx of Enlightenment
57 Doubling Season
58 Harness the Storm
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reality Spasm
Edit: For deck 2, it looks like Scarecrow is actually compatible with Contraband Kingpin, since Soul Separator will give Kingpin tokens flying. So we can add Scarecrow and remove Runed Halo.
Revision to deck 2:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Minion Reflector
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Moan of the Unhallowed
27 Drake Familiar
28 Scarecrow
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Starlight
32 Recoup
33 Recoup
34 Mountain
35 Restore
36 Panharmonicon
37 Wormfang Behemoth
38 Distorting Wake
39 Chrome Mox
40 Aegis Automaton
41 Guardian of the Guildpact
42 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
43 Bolt Bend
44 Alhammarret's Archive
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
48 Contraband Kingpin
49 Precursor Golem
50 Blue Sun's Zenith
51 Consecrated Sphinx
52 Widespread Panic
53 Jester's Mask
54 Drafna's Restoration
55 Sphinx of Enlightenment
56 Doubling Season
57 Harness the Storm
58 Reality Spasm
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reality Spasm
Edit: For deck 1, if we replace Military Intelligence with Bearer of Overwhelming Truths, we can add another layer. (up to 9)
Revision to deck 1:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Thousand-Year Elixir
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen by the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Marchesa's Smuggler
51 Fountain of Cho
52 Amulet of Vigor
53 Animist's Awakening
54 Blue Sun's Zenith
55 Bearer of Overwhelming Truths
56 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
57 World at War
58 Doubling Season
59 Uproot
60 Drafna's Restoration
Ongoing investigation is similar but I think the green activation allows for life smuggling. (Though it'd still be limited by green so might be ok?)
So deck 2 is currently in the lead, with (BB_{w^2+w2+8})^2 (BB_{w^2+w2+7) (X).
So we can get the last Reality Spasm by swapping panharmonicon and Restore for Molderhulk?
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Minion Reflector
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg Syphon-Mage
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Moan of the Unhallowed
27 Drake Familiar
28 Scarecrow
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Starlight
32 Recoup
33 Recoup
34 Mountain
35 Molderhulk
36 Wormfang Behemoth
37 Distorting Wake
38 Chrome Mox
39 Aegis Automaton
40 Guardian of the Guildpact
41 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
42 Bolt Bend
43 Alhammarret's Archive
45 Show and Tell
46 Omniscience
47 Contraband Kingpin
48 Precursor Golem
49 Blue Sun's Zenith
50 Consecrated Sphinx
51 Widespread Panic
52 Jester's Mask
53 Drafna's Restoration
54 Sphinx of Enlightenment
55 Doubling Season
56 Harness the Storm
57 Reality Spasm
58 Reality Spasm
59 Reality Spasm
60 Reality Spasm
seems pretty good.
Edit:
As for some other probably less fruitful ideas, just to explore our options:
Snow mana might still get something useful from Kaldheim, (Frost Augur?)
Sweepers that can't kill Goblin Boom-Keg are fine? eg: Witch's Vengeance, Tivadar's Crusade, whirlwind, Phyrexian scriptures.
With Mirror gallery gone, are there other legends that are useful to be limited to only one copy of?
-Starlight
-Recoup (leaving the second copy)
+Gravitic punch
+Gravitic punch
?
However, how do we actually have nontoken copies of Urborg Syphon-Mage enter the battlefield efficiently in order to create hasted tokens?
Edit: In fact Sphinx of the second sun is too late to matter as it only works after the only combat step
Thousand year elixir for not haste? but the other ability is really cheap untaps of creatures...
Otherwise, we can just switch Minion Reflector back to Dual Nature, and add a universal source of haste like Fervor. That costs us a Reality Spasm, which puts deck 2 in a tie with deck 1 again. Anyone have other ideas for how to give haste to Urborg more efficiently?
I think Break through the line is almost actually cheap enough, as we can Wrong Turn the siphon mage before doing any computation.The problem is that we'd need to pay an additional R after every Worldfire, which I guess we can do via Graven Cairns? but I don't think we need to pay for haste for anything else and can just build up red that way so this looks like a dead end.
edit: we'd also need to somehow untap the hasted siphon-mage, which is not something we can afford to do cheaply. so this doubly doesn't work.
I'm trying to think of alternative ways to get Urborg Siphon-Mage to work. We can use Glowsphere Shaman to bring a land from the graveyard to the library, and then we can use Moonlight Bargain to bring it to our hand, without actually drawing. Then, we can discard the land to cast Spitting Image, at the total cost of two life. So that seems like it can work, and Spitting Image allows us to drop Dack Fayden and use Minion Reflector to give Urborg haste. But, we can't use Drafna's Restoration, as that will allow us to fetch Black Lotus relatively cheaply. We could switch to say Nyx Lotus and untap it with Tolarian Academy, but this moots untapping, so we're in much the same boat as if we used Thousand-Year Elixir, and we've mooted green mana as well. So, I'm not quite sure how to start the layers sequence with this.
So, deck 1 goes back into the lead.
Previously the reasoning was that if we kept a land in hand through the worldfire transition, then it wasn't in play to get killed, so we'd be down red.
But with deck 1 having Fountain of cho as a second land, that logic no longer holds.
Dack Fayden also gives us 2 more card slots in some of the previous versions, so those might be more competitive too.
Edit: Looking at deck 1 again, it doesn't look like we can really get started - we have Blue Sun's Zenith, but we don't have the mana to draw cards from it. (nor for Military Intelligence)
If we switch out say Blue Sun's Zenith to add Sphinx of Enlightenment, we lose a layer. But, we can switch to Sphinx of the Second Sun, which allows us to drop Marchesa's Smuggler. This costs us a little bit, but we can stay at 8 layers.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Thousand-Year Elixir
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Distorting Wake
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Contraband Kingpin
50 Sphinx of Enlightenment
51 Fountain of Cho
52 Amulet of Vigor
53 Animist's Awakening
54 Blue Sun's Zenith
55 Tamiyo's Journal
56 Sphinx of the Second Sun
57 World at War
58 Doubling Season
59 Uproot
60 Drafna's Restoration