MTG Salvation

Hopefully switching from Gelectrode to Pyre Hound / Korozda Gorgon will allow us to keep Repercussion.

Updated deck:

Considering how restrained the recursion from graveyard is in this deck, is there any reason to play Horobi, Death's Wail over just a sacrifice outlet? That Ashnod's Altar would go a long way to speeding up the beginning steps, not only for the extra colorless, but also because it would get things under Mimic Vat without burning through any of the targeting triggers we want for other things.

Using Horobi, Death's Wail is actually important for our Ackermann stage. Everytime we resolve a Psychic Battle trigger we need to decide whether to bounce the target with Cowardice or destroy it with Horobi. In the first case we can get a new batch of Bloodbond March triggers, in the second case we can get a token from Mimic Vat, but the card gets stuck in the graveyard until the next Bloodbond MArch trigger comes up.

If we can sacrifice freely we can turn every Bloodbond March trigger into a token, which easily goes infinite.

Edit: I would like to get rid of Show and Tell so we can use Pain Magnification, Repercussion, Five-Alarm Fire instead of Ghastlord of Fugue.

Eureka would allow the opponent to put lands into play as well, so we can't use that as an alternative for the start.

So attempt 1: Chancellor of the Tangle, Chancellor of the Tangle, Channel, Tolarian Academy, Darksteel Myr, Crystal Chimes, Memory Jar. Tap Academy for UUU, Use Jar to draw 7, including Omniscience. Play that (2 life left), go from here.

Memory Jar doesn't help with going infinite since cards exiled face down are out of our reach. The extra cards needed still fit into the deck, I think.

Very nice, that takes the deck to 16 layers!

I would like to add Selesnya Guildgate and Captain of the Mists in between Argivian Archaeologist and Mana Confluence, but unfortunately that doesn't fit with the most recent change (Tolarian Academy). We can still salvage one of the two gained layers by switching from Underworld Dreams to Megrim and then to Pain Magnification.

So, an alternative deck:



Also 16 layers. This deck has one more deck slot I think, but if the decks stay this way then the Underworld Dreams deck is a little better, since we can benefit from card draw at at the beginning.

To merge the two improvements, it would be nice to spend a black mana to untap Selesnya Guildgate, but I didn't see any way to do that. (Red mana is spoiled by the need for Izzet Guildmage.) Or if we could find a start that didn't mess up blue - perhaps unlikely if we have to hard cast Omniscience so maybe some card that can put it directly into play without letting the opponent play his lands.

There is another infinite in the layers: donated Repercussions can trigger donated Tamanoas early. Removing Repercussion would remove 2 layers, so that is probably not the fix we want.

We should also replace Dreadbore with Maelstrom Pulse so that Izzet Guildmage can't target creatures for a red mana.

Edit: We get a start that can hardcast Omniscience while leaving blue mana expensive if we replace Mana Confluence with 3x Phyrexian Lens.

But we don't have enough life to pay all that colorless, so some creativity is required:
2xChancellor of the Tangle into Channel. Semblance Anvil imprinting Creepy Doll. (17 life, 2 cards left)
Play Phyrexian Lens, Memory Jar. activate Jar. (13 Life, 7 cards)
Play 2x Phyrexian Lens. (11 Life, 5 cards)
Play Omniscience. (1 Life, 4 cards)

At that point those are quite a few extra cards and I'm not sure if that fits or is worth it anymore.

The culprit seems to be Chandra, Pyromaster, so my first thought would be to replace her with some Planeswalker that targeted just a player rather than a creature. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any suitable Planeswalker other than Sarkhan the Mad. Sarkhan the Mad is almost perfect, except that it can create large dragon tokens, so it messes up Pain Magnification. In the Selesnya Guildgate deck we can go back from Pain Magnification to Ghastlord of Fugue at the loss of just one layer, so we can salvage 15 layers in that deck. For the other deck, I don't see a good solution yet.

If the planeswalker can't target a creature we lose the Repercussion laer at that point anyway.

True. But Sarkhan the Mad's first ability does deal damage, and to himself rather than a player or a creature, so I think that does work, and saves Pain Magnification and the latter Repercussion in both decks. Nice!

Unfortunately, the latest starting sequence takes too many cards - by my count there are eight new cards, and we can only cut three, so we are over the limit I think.


[EDIT] No, what am I thinking, that third ability still messes up Pain Magnification.

cutting the Repercussion I think I can fit 15 layers into 60 cards exactly:



I hope I haven't missed any required support cards here. Should reach F_{w^2+15}(2).

On a mathy note: I don't think adding Finest Hour takes that to F_{w^2+15}(3). The damage we deal is roughly F_{w^2+14}(F_{w^2+14}(Y+1)) with Y being the number of combat damage steps before the second main phase. Without Finest Hour that is two, as we can have a first striker and an indestructible non first striker. That is enough for F_{w^2+15}(2).

For F_{w^2+15}(3) we would need Y=F_{w^2+14}(3) so we would need that many Finest Hour copys before the first combat. That seems impossible to achieve without having access to any Five-Alarm Fire trigger events. (We would need two)

Still Finest Hour is obviously the best card to add, short of the next layer.

Edit: Wait, can Chandra trigger the opponent's Tamanoas? I don't think they have any way to get a Teferi emblem, so they can't activate Chandra. But what happens if we donate Chandra, while the ability is on the stack?

Good work. I'm pretty sure this can be improved though, particularly the start.

I believe the damage we get is roughly F_{w^2+14}(F_{w^2+14}(X+1)), where X is the number of Finest Hours we can generate prior to the first combat phase. This is roughly F_{w^2+13}(Y), where Y is the number of Selvala's Enforcers we can use with our full deck in play (minus the last few cards) before the opponent runs out of cards in his library. Y I guess is around 40 or so. F_{w^2+15}(3) = F_{w^2+14}(F_{w^2+14}(F_{w^2+14}(3))), and F_{w^2+13}(40) < F_{w^2+14}(3), so it does appear that we don't quite reach F_{w^2+15}(3). So I said that it was "roughly" F_{w^2+15}(3), since it does seem to be closer to that than F_{w^2+15}(2) in a rather vague subjective sense. But it would be more accurate to give upper and lower bounds of course.


[EDIT] Hmm, I didn't think about donating Chandra while the loyalty ability was on the stack. I'm no rules expert, but I guess that would trigger an opponent's Tamanoa, which means the deck doesn't quite work. Still looking for a fix.


[EDIT 2] We could always replace Chandra, Pyromaster with say Elsepth Tirel, bypassing Tamanoa. This loses a layer, but it allows Repercussion to come back in. Unfortunately, by my count that gives us 61 cards. So not quite there yet.

This is where Cultural Exchange over Scrambleverse could come in handy. It can only exchange control of creatures, so giving away Chandra would be impossible. There just needs to be some way of giving away an initial batch of creatures by other means, possibly with the dummy sorcery slot.

Yes, that would work also, but again it puts us at 61 cards.

Replacing Chandra, Pyromaster with Ajani, Mentor of Heroes allows us to get rid of Maelstrom Pulse, since we can kill Ajani by activating his ultimate loyalty ability. That puts us as 15 layers and exactly 60 cards.

We currently also make use of the untap part of Scrambleverse to produce Elvish Guidance tokens. So replacing it needs to consider that.

I found another way to get 15 layers by switching back to Gelectrode and skipping Repercussion so Tamanoa stays safe:


We can destroy Teferi, Temporal Archmage by donating him and then shooting him down with Gelectrodes. That makes room for Finest Hour.

We can also go back to Gelectrode previous deck, which gives just enough room to replace Scrambleverse with Cultural Exchange, Hunted Phantasm, and Breaking Wave.

So, we now have several ways to get 15 layers. Can we get 16?


[EDIT] I think I see a way: Starting from the deck in post 696, we can remove Chandra, Pyromaster, and add Caldera Lake, which can be untapped by Teferi, Temporal Archmage to deal damage. This interferes with Captain of the Mists, but per Iijil's latest post, we can replace Selesnya Guildgate / Captain of the Mists with Marble Diamond / Filigree Sages. And, we can now readd Repercussion. Unfortunately, that puts us at the dreaded 61 cards again; we can't donate Teferi to destroy it, since we don't have a cheap source of damage. But we're close.


[EDIT 2] Ah, I keep forgetting that Finest Hour isn't required. So we do have 16 layers, except with one activation of the final layer rather than two.

[EDIT 3] No wait, deck 696 doesn't have Finest Hour. So we're still one card over.

We can save two cards by replacing Jokulhaups with Obliterate. One copy of obliterate can stay on the stack to provide a target for Spellshift that doesn't get removed even when Spellshift resolves. We are able to cut Izzet Guildmage and Mountain.

If that is correct we get 16 layers with Finest Hour.

Very nice!

I've been thinking about improving the start. I thought about Mana Confluence / Mana Crypt / Flash / Academy Rector into Omniscience, but unfortunately we're not allowed to have another instant. But Academy Rector seems like a good lead.

With Academy Reactor we would also be able to return Elvish Guidance to the battlefield between stage transitions, leading to way to much green mana there. So effects like Academy Reactor would require more changes unless they take the enchantment from our hand.

Could we arrange something like: start a single Chancellor of the Tangle, add Mana Confluence and Mana Crypt to get up to 4 mana, play some free sorcery like Land Grant, and take advantage of the existing Spellshift to turn it into something expensive, perhaps Warp World? Certainly Chaos Warp is no good because it has targets, but a resolving Warp World will indiscriminately remove all tokens and indeed all progress that isn't currently on the stack (unlike Obliterate, which can spare enchantments and planeswalkers). Still, getting a refresh on every permanent in the deck may yet be able to add to a growing repertoire of lingering triggers while still getting back the Warp World.

That is indeed quite interesting, SadisticMystic. At the very least, it could cut down on the number of cards we need to start, assuming Warp World does not go infinite with the rest of the deck.


[EDIT] Hmm, it seems to go infinite with Elvish Guidance and Crystal Chimes at least. So we would have to reformulate the ending sequence if we were to use Warp World.


[EDIT 2] I believe that Teferi, Temporal Archmage and his accompanying menagerie can be replaced by Reality Spasm, which needs to be cast from hand to untap permanents. That saves a few more cards.

Reality Spasm would be a second instant and still triggers Pyrehound when cast with X=0.

But I think we can use Animist's Awakening to get the same effect. Nice.

Actually, considering that we only want to untap the land so that it can deal damage to us, why not just use Detonate and skip the land?

And for almost an extra layer there's Pyromancer's Goggles. Makes copies of red spells, but only if we can spend mana on them. For Detonate that won't be that many copies, since we have no targets with huge converted mana costs.

We could use Fireball to spend all the mana for all of the copies, but then we lose the Repercussion layer again. I have found no usable X sorceries that only deal damage to us. So we are still at 16 layers.

Oh, hey: go for the land, with Animist's Awakening, Pyromancer's Goggles and Painter's Servant. That should add the extra layer.

Nice. So I believe the deck currently stands at:

I just noticed, that Scrambleverse can untap the Marble Diamond, avoiding the need for blue mana and going infinite. My bad.

I think we have enough extra card slots to fix the layer though.
- To create X tokens from one Elvish Guidance retrieval, a spell that gives haste is good enough. We can then use Splinter Twin to create tokens with the original Copy Enchantment, bouncing it to untap. Such a spell doesn't hurt the other layers. So remove Scrambleverse, add Burst of Speed.
- We don't want to be able to donate lands, otherwise, Caldera Lake could trigger the opponents Tamanoa early. So I think we need to go with Cultural Exchange + Hunted Phantasm.

We lose both of the bonus cards, but at least we keep the 17 layers.

Unfortunately, it seems that Crystal Chimes does not quite work out with Burst of Speed. Giving Crystal Chimes haste allows it to tap to create a token copy. We can then bounce the original, bounce March of the Machines, then tap the token copy and sacrifice it to put a return all enchantments trigger on the stack. Then we can go ahead a put a lot of Elvish Guidances on Fungal Reaches, and tap it to get a lot of green mana. Obliterate will recycle Fungal Reaches, and then the return trigger is waiting to get the enchantments back. We can then play Crystal Chimes again and repeat.

You are right about the Crystal Chimes.

The hasty aura token production can also work without retrieving Copy Enchantment as we no longer need to imprint that and can just bounce it to keep it save in hand. So we use Nomad Mythmaker. We get white via Mox Pearl, which we can't bounce or copy without it dying. We retrieve that with Night Dealings for just the black. We get black via Charcoal Diamond which replaces the former Marble Diamond.

So Out: Marble Diamond, Argivian Archaeologist, Crystal Chimes.
In: Charcoal Diamond, Mox Pearl, Nomad Mythmaker.

Edit: Oh wait, Nomad Mythmaker wants to attach the aure to a creature, but we have no creature that Elvish Guidance can attach to. No additional room for a creature land...

Also, Channel is a restricted card, so it can't be the duplicate for Helix.