Does it also need to be a noncreature source for Curiosity and not donateable for Tamanoa?
Depending on the rest of the sequence you might be able to use something like Dispersing Orb or Glen Elendra Archmage with Furnace Celebration. That fails both questions above and can target creatures, but on the plus side it adds another layer to the damage dealing.
Sacrificing is an interesting concept. I've not found a way to truly make it work as part of the sequence yet.
Edit: I just noticed that some of the lists using Animist's Awakening don't actually have a way to trigger Night Dealings. Do we actually have a working 19 layer deck at this point?
EDIT: Looks like I accidentally introduced an infinite loop when I chose Tormod's Crypt as the card to exile the opponents graveyard. I thought requiring artifact retrieval for later activations would be good enough, but it turns out we can just put it in a Mimic Vat to go infinite by repeatiedly casting Scrambleverse.
That Scrambleverse is save to use for untapping stuff that produces higher level ressources depends on the fact, that we can only turn those ressource into more Scrambleverse casts if we destroy the thing that we untap and have to retrieve it again afterwards. I overlooked that removing cards from graveyards is sufficient for recasting our sorceries, we don't strictly need green mana.
So the effect that exiles the opponents graveyard has to be more expensive. I think we can use Famished Ghoul.
EDIT2: I think Precursor Golem is actually save to use to get copies of our spells. We don't have that Changeling Berserker loop anymore and the Hyperstage uses no spells with creatures as target. I couldn't get useful target creature spells in the same deck as Repercussion, but getting the op Precursor Golem layers twice makes up for that.
Recently I've thought a little bit about trying to resurrect the stages. The most obvious way to do it is to narrow the hyperstage to artifacts. I tried to see what I could do with Pyre Hound, and the closest thing I could find was Stingmoggie. So we need some way to transfer the Pyre Hound counters onto Stingmoggie; we can do this with Daghatar the Adament or Simic Guildmage. Unfortunately, Stingmoggie comes with counters whenever it enters the battlefield, so we cannot be able to bounce him easily. If we can't bounce him, then we need to have a way to have him survive Obliterate. The only way that I thought of for how to do that was to cast Indestructibility or something similar on him. Of course, Indestructibility can be cast on any permanent, but I was hoping that the hyperstage would fall apart without Stingmoggie, so that we would have no choice but to cast it on him. I do know it is very dangerous though.
There are many other things to figure out, but I wanted to get your input on this idea. Is there any hope for getting stages back?
The biggest problem with Indestructibility is that it would allow +1/+1 counters to survive through Obliterate. Then we can use them in the higher level stage.
Another possibility is a way to get Stingmongie back, but not the creature for later stages. The only thing in that direction that I found in a quick look is Conflux, with the later stage being an Eldrazi. Rig up a couble confluxes in the transition sequence and be good to go.
The third possibility is having the extra stage driven by a creature with protection, like we had in the pre-Horobi decks. I'm not sure whether those sacrifice driven stages work with Mimic Vat actually. Presumably they don't work, since having an outside source do the sacrificing is like giving the original haste. That can work with Soul Foundry where only bounces matter, but with Mimic Vat the death is relevant too.
You could try to use Soul Foundry and a haste provider, but then you need a way to ensure that ressources of the current stage are spent to activate the stage transition. Requiring two spells cast with Kaho that has haste is not good enough.
Regarding Kaho. With a stage that only targets artifacts that guy can't be reset easily, so thats another thing to think about.
So theres a lot of stuff to work out. It is not completely impossible, but for now I'm not holding my breath.
Edit: Stingmoggie is probably not the card we want. In addition to being unbouncable because of ETB, it also destroys lands. Killing just a targeted land, means we can get mana from that land without killing all our creatures. Not a good effect here.
Well, we can get Stingmoggie back from the graveyard using Horde of Notions; if we don't want to invalidate all the colors, we can use Primal Beyond to provide the mana. (or maybe two or three, if we need multiple colors) Actually, that seems pretty good; we don't need to be able to target him, so we can't bounce him.
Wait, we do get to bring him onto the battlefield once, which gets him two +1/+1 counters, which can be used for the later stage. So it seems there is still a problem. How would Conflux work?
Can you explain in greater detail why requiring two spells cast with Kaho is not good enough? I figure with one spell, we could bounce Kaho in the lower stage, so that we would be able to play and tap him in the higher stage, but if two spells are required it seems that we would need to do more.
For resetting Kaho, I was thinking about using Riptide Laboratory, which cheap blue mana. We get just one Riptide Laboratory per stage transition, so we can't keep targeting him. Casting Hero's Demise is another possibility.
Or, we could use an artifact to trigger Obliterate somehow. Brain in a Jar and Isochron Scepter unfortunately cast or imprint cards from hand, so I don't see the advantage over just casting them from your hand. There's also Bosium Strip, but unfortunately, it let's you wait on when you cast the spell, so we could wait until a higher stage to cast Obliterate, which I think goes infinite.
So, maybe restricting to artifacts is too ambitious. (although it would allow a lot of extra stages!) Perhaps just getting a stage or two would be good enough.
As for the two spells with Kaho: I'm assuming that the creature we use for the stages can target Kaho and has haste. If we don't use that creatur directly o reset Kaho it probably wouldn't help in tying the cast to the stage. We can then play Kaho, cast a spell, play stage creature, bounce Kaho, play Kaho again. Both creatures can probably be bounced back to hand in the lower stage.
Hmm, so if we require Kaho to cast at least three spells to trigger the stage transition, then we could theoretically put Soul Foundry back in and therefore Stillmoon Cavalier / Deadapult. A tall order, I suppose.
Going back to our layer optimization, I have an outline for 22 layers. Going back to Mortiphobia:
black shockland - 1
Boon Reflection - 2
Tamanoa - 3
Swallowing Plague - 5
Hana Kami - 5
Elvish Guidance - 6
Copy Enchantment - 7
Crystal Chimes - 8
Argivian Archaeologist - 8
tapped land - 9
Reality Spasm - 11
*something that taps for a blue mana* - 12
*something that recycles the above* - 13
Night Dealings - 14
Boon Reflection - 15
Tamanoa - 16
Underworld Dreams - 17
Curiosity - 18
Underworld Dreams - 19
Pain Magnification - 20
Five Alarm Fire - 21
World at War - 22
So, we just need a transition going from blue mana to Night Dealings that is worth at least two layers, but I haven't found one yet.
Don't forget that you also have to retrieve the Reality Spasm.
What I think works is to use the u/b storage land and have blue for free, then search up Reality Spasm with Night Dealings for 12 layers up to that.
At the end use the previously unused red mana as such: Pain Magnification - 18 Fireball - 20 Savage Ventmaw - 21 World at War - 22
If there's a way to get the red mana by actually tapping something that would be another layer.
Does this all fit together? Is there a way to generate the 5th green for the Genesis Wave start or do we have to use a hardcast omniscience version? We are allowed to add cheap blue, but does it use too much space?
But your version also gets 22 layers, and is probably more compact.
I would like to have used Aether Tide instead of Scorched Earth for an extra layer, using I guess Dryad Arbor to discard. But I guess Dryad Arbor goes infinite with Scrambleverse.
Crosis's Catacombs doesn't force a land bounce: you have the option of simply sacrificing it, possibly with a tap in response so that it gets a similar profile to Archaeological Dig.
As for getting that extra mana layer at the end, I was looking at Honored Hierarch, but once it becomes renowned we can keep untapping it for mana. Sakiko, Mother of Summer gets two mana layers, but it only produces green.
I also considered Druids' Repository and transferring the charge counters onto something that could tap for mana, but I didn't find a card that couldn't already produce charge counters too cheaply. (There are storage lands that only get counters on their upkeep, but those are of course storage counters.)
[EDIT] There's Jeweled Amulet and Ice Cauldron, I suppose. Jeweled Amulet goes infinite with Mana Reflection and Scrambleverse. I gues Ice Cauldron won't go infinite since you can only cast the exiled card once, but for that same reason Druids' Repository won't help.
I was worried about about Druids' Repository as it is a donatable black source, but I guess as it is actually expensive enough to fill the repository that that's okay.
Sakiko, Mother of Summer would only give one layer as the size of the attack doesn't change between resolutions of the trigger.
You can probably get in an Obliterate before the bounce a land trigger resolves, skipping the 'cost' of that step by just not having any lands in play.
It occurs to me that a token that can tap to generate a mana by tapping is worth two layers, as you can untap it a bunch of times with Scrambleverse before it inevitably gets destroyed by Obliterate. So for example, it would be nice to add Mardu Ascendancy and a card that allowed Goblins to tap for red mana. Sadly, there is no such card.
Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury can produce an elf token that taps for green mana, but it is pretty awkward to try to fit a Planeswalker in at that point.
[EDIT] Maybe Mardu Ascendancy and Brightstone Ritual? Mardu Ascendancy puts a bunch of Goblin token triggers on the stack, and you resolve each one at a time; each time, you can use X black mana to cast Brightstone Ritual X times, getting X red mana. So that's two layers, I think.
This late in the sequence relying on Obliterate to destroy something we can only put on the battlefield a limited amount of times doesn't work anymore. We can only do that as long as the Scrambleverse/Brightstone Ritual casts don't allow us to generate more of the same without casting an obliterate.
In this case we can loop Brightstone Rituals by converting the red mana it produces down to Reality Spasm copies. Then we can generate the black necessary to get the Ritual out of the graveyard and cast it again. No Obliterates needed.
Actually, I really think that Crystal Chimes is worth two layers. We can destroy it to imprint it on a Mimic Vat, then untap the Mimic Vat using Scrambleverse a bunch of times to create a bunch of Crystal Chimes token abilities on the stack. Each time we resolve one, we can use Splinter Twin to create a lot of copies of Crystal Chimes, then we cast a Scrambleverse to untap them. We then sacrifice all of them, putting a bunch of return enchantment abilities on the stack, and then we resolve those abilities one at a time. So it does seem like two layers to me.
As far as getting another layer at the red mana level goes, I've kinda run dry of ideas. Sacrificing lands to say Lotus Vale is no good. Discarding a land to Mox Diamond is better, but then we can easily untap it.
[EDIT] Again, we could go back to Gelectrode to get access to +1/+1 counters, allowing us to remove Korozda Gorgon, Pyre Hound and Vampiric Touch. We need to replace Curiosity with Consecrated Sphinx, so we lose a layer, but we don't lose a Repercussion layer anymore. So if we could get more than one more layer using +1/+1 counters it would be an improvement. At the very least, we can remove Underworld Dreams and add Chasm Skulker, Corpsejack Menace, and Ion Storm to get the layer back. We would have saved a card slot, and added Consecrated Sphinx back to the deck for a slight benefit, although it is quite miniscule I admit.
For a "deals damage to target creature" that won't run afoul of Repercussion / Pain Magnification, we could use Winter Blast, although it still seems we can't add Repercussion due to triggering an oppoonent's Tamanoa.
We can get another layer by using Genesis Wave to retrieve the Crystal Chimes and delaying two colors until after the Pain Magnification. The problem is that the start gets very complicated, because both green and blue have to stay difficult to produce. I found one method that fits in exactly:
The start works like this:
4x Chancellor of the Tangle, Channel (19 colorless, 2 green), Hunting Triad, Memory Jar. (11 colorless, 1 green, 7 cards, 3 elves)
Molten Slagheap, Elvish Guidance (9 Colorless), Tap land for colorless and 3 green (10 Colorless, 3 green), Genesis Wave with x=10.
Edit: Going the Gelectrode + Ion Storm route would make Hunting Triad too powerful, we would need another start to take advantage of that.
EDIT: Actually, no that doesn't work. To get a layer out of Corpsejack Menace we need to go through the Hyperstage between each Chasm Skulker trigger. But that will destroy the Chasm Skulkers that are about to retrieve their +1/+1 counters.
EDIT2: We should be able to cut Rasputin Dreamweaver and rely on Pyromancer's Goggles for all our cheap mana needs. Using Sylvan Offering we can cast a Genesis Wave for X=10 with 13 green mana floating and three cards in hand. That seems powerful enough to get going without Rasputin.
We can use that card slot to get Finest Hour back.
So, I am really quite satisfied with the way the ending sequence is turning out. Unfortunately, we may need to redo everything. This is because I think I know how to add another stage.
It's nothing new actually, it's just the final stage of the previous deck before you came up with Soul Foundry. Use a creature with protection from the hyperstage creature/creatures and cycling. We will use an unused color to target the new creature, then with cycling we will draw something that allows us to get that color back.
So for example, if we use Gelectrode in the hyperstage, we can use Bloated Toad as the cycler. We can use a Mox to get our chosen new color, say Mox Pearl. Advance Scout can target Bloated Toad for a white.
Unfortunately, I don't think targeting creatures is enough to transition into the hyperstage - we need to produce mana of the color the hyperstage uses. There are probably multiple ways to do this - either the card we draw can produce two or more colors, or we can include another creature with protection that can produce our desired color. If worst comes to worst, we can use Chrome Mox to get the color. The hyperstage has creatures with red and blue (Gelectrode) and green ((Titania, Protector of Argoth). We can remove Rasputin Dreamweaver, and replace Horobi, Death's Wail with Dismiss Into Dream, remove black creatures. So then we can use Mortiphobia to use black for the hyperstage, and then we can use white for the Bloated Toad stage (using say Oversoul of Dusk for the transition card). We could use say Unlikely Alliance to spend white to target creatures.
Before we start redoing the ending sequence, does everything work?
Drawing a Mox Pearl produces two white. The first from tapping it, the second from the Mimic Vat token. So that's out.
Chrome Mox should work if we can remove some colors of creatures from the Hyperstage. That also leaves card draw untouched.
Yeah, seems like it should work. Great Idea!
We might then even be able to chain stages using multiple colors. Using say Pyre Hound + Ion Storm can free up blue. Is there some alternative for Titania, Protector of Argoth to free green as well? The bounce creatures from later stages would need protection from all the targeting before, of course.
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I think blue would work with Izzet Guildmage and Suffer the Past.
That would allow instants, but turns off life gain for us.
Depending on the rest of the sequence you might be able to use something like Dispersing Orb or Glen Elendra Archmage with Furnace Celebration. That fails both questions above and can target creatures, but on the plus side it adds another layer to the damage dealing.
Sacrificing is an interesting concept. I've not found a way to truly make it work as part of the sequence yet.
Edit: I just noticed that some of the lists using Animist's Awakening don't actually have a way to trigger Night Dealings. Do we actually have a working 19 layer deck at this point?
2 Opalescence
3 Psychic Battle
4 Cowardice
5 Horobi, Death's Wail
6 Bloodbond March
7 Cephalid Shrine
8 Rasputin Dreamweaver
9 March of the Machines
10 Mindshrieker
11 Mimic Vat
12 Omniscience
13 Leyline of Anticipation
14 Riftsweeper
15 Splinter Twin
16 Crown of the Ages
17 Icatian Scout
18 Bearscape
19 Spellweaver Helix
20 World at War
21 World at War
22 Korozda Gorgon
23 Pyre Hound
24 Titania, Protector of Argoth
25 Creepy Doll
27 Spellshift
28 Kaho, Minamo Historian
29 Fungal Reaches
30 Elvish Guidance
31 Wild Research
32 Mox Pearl
33 Hanna, Ship's Navigator
34 Hallowed Fountain
35 Boon Reflection
36 Tamanoa
37 Stensia Bloodhall
38 Dimir Guildgate
39 Animist's Awakening
40 Night Dealings
41 Underworld Dreams
42 Curiosity
43 Pain Magnification
44 Repercussion
45 Five-Alarm Fire
46 Finest Hour
48 Scrambleverse
49 Tormod's Crypt
50 Selvala's Enforcer
51 Pyromancer's Goggles
52 Painter's Servant
53 Vampiric Touch
54 Channel
55 Chancellor of the Tangle
56 Chancellor of the Tangle
57 Chancellor of the Tangle
58 Chancellor of the Tangle
59 Genesis Wave
60 Thought Reflection
Is that a working deck?
(with Stensia Bloodhall the Vampiric Touch is not needed, but it's a good fix for the Salt Flats style versions.)
EDIT: Looks like I accidentally introduced an infinite loop when I chose Tormod's Crypt as the card to exile the opponents graveyard. I thought requiring artifact retrieval for later activations would be good enough, but it turns out we can just put it in a Mimic Vat to go infinite by repeatiedly casting Scrambleverse.
That Scrambleverse is save to use for untapping stuff that produces higher level ressources depends on the fact, that we can only turn those ressource into more Scrambleverse casts if we destroy the thing that we untap and have to retrieve it again afterwards. I overlooked that removing cards from graveyards is sufficient for recasting our sorceries, we don't strictly need green mana.
So the effect that exiles the opponents graveyard has to be more expensive. I think we can use Famished Ghoul.
EDIT2: I think Precursor Golem is actually save to use to get copies of our spells. We don't have that Changeling Berserker loop anymore and the Hyperstage uses no spells with creatures as target. I couldn't get useful target creature spells in the same deck as Repercussion, but getting the op Precursor Golem layers twice makes up for that.
2 Opalescence
3 Psychic Battle
4 Cowardice
5 Horobi, Death's Wail
6 Bloodbond March
7 Cephalid Shrine
8 Rasputin Dreamweaver
9 March of the Machines
10 Mindshrieker
11 Mimic Vat
12 Omniscience
13 Leyline of Anticipation
14 Riftsweeper
15 Splinter Twin
16 Crown of the Ages
17 Icatian Scout
18 Bearscape
19 Spellweaver Helix
20 World at War
21 World at War
22 Korozda Gorgon
23 Pyre Hound
24 Titania, Protector of Argoth
25 Creepy Doll
27 Spellshift
28 Kaho, Minamo Historian
29 Fungal Reaches
30 Elvish Guidance
31 Wild Research
32 Mox Pearl
33 Overgrown Tomb
34 Boon Reflection
35 Tamanoa
36 Swallowing Plague
37 Night Dealings
38 Underworld Dreams
39 Curiosity
40 Pain Magnification
41 Invoke the Firemind
42 Dimir Guildgate
43 Nature's Will
44 Finest Hour
45 Mana Reflection
46 Scrambleverse
47 Famished Ghoul
48 Selvala's Enforcer
49 Precursor Golem
50 Vampiric Touch
52 Chancellor of the Tangle
53 Chancellor of the Tangle
54 Chancellor of the Tangle
55 Chancellor of the Tangle
56 Genesis Wave
57 Copy Enchantment
58 Copy Enchantment
59 Copy Enchantment
60 Thought Reflection
Recently I've thought a little bit about trying to resurrect the stages. The most obvious way to do it is to narrow the hyperstage to artifacts. I tried to see what I could do with Pyre Hound, and the closest thing I could find was Stingmoggie. So we need some way to transfer the Pyre Hound counters onto Stingmoggie; we can do this with Daghatar the Adament or Simic Guildmage. Unfortunately, Stingmoggie comes with counters whenever it enters the battlefield, so we cannot be able to bounce him easily. If we can't bounce him, then we need to have a way to have him survive Obliterate. The only way that I thought of for how to do that was to cast Indestructibility or something similar on him. Of course, Indestructibility can be cast on any permanent, but I was hoping that the hyperstage would fall apart without Stingmoggie, so that we would have no choice but to cast it on him. I do know it is very dangerous though.
There are many other things to figure out, but I wanted to get your input on this idea. Is there any hope for getting stages back?
Another possibility is a way to get Stingmongie back, but not the creature for later stages. The only thing in that direction that I found in a quick look is Conflux, with the later stage being an Eldrazi. Rig up a couble confluxes in the transition sequence and be good to go.
The third possibility is having the extra stage driven by a creature with protection, like we had in the pre-Horobi decks. I'm not sure whether those sacrifice driven stages work with Mimic Vat actually. Presumably they don't work, since having an outside source do the sacrificing is like giving the original haste. That can work with Soul Foundry where only bounces matter, but with Mimic Vat the death is relevant too.
You could try to use Soul Foundry and a haste provider, but then you need a way to ensure that ressources of the current stage are spent to activate the stage transition. Requiring two spells cast with Kaho that has haste is not good enough.
Regarding Kaho. With a stage that only targets artifacts that guy can't be reset easily, so thats another thing to think about.
So theres a lot of stuff to work out. It is not completely impossible, but for now I'm not holding my breath.
Edit: Stingmoggie is probably not the card we want. In addition to being unbouncable because of ETB, it also destroys lands. Killing just a targeted land, means we can get mana from that land without killing all our creatures. Not a good effect here.
Wait, we do get to bring him onto the battlefield once, which gets him two +1/+1 counters, which can be used for the later stage. So it seems there is still a problem. How would Conflux work?
Can you explain in greater detail why requiring two spells cast with Kaho is not good enough? I figure with one spell, we could bounce Kaho in the lower stage, so that we would be able to play and tap him in the higher stage, but if two spells are required it seems that we would need to do more.
For resetting Kaho, I was thinking about using Riptide Laboratory, which cheap blue mana. We get just one Riptide Laboratory per stage transition, so we can't keep targeting him. Casting Hero's Demise is another possibility.
Or, we could use an artifact to trigger Obliterate somehow. Brain in a Jar and Isochron Scepter unfortunately cast or imprint cards from hand, so I don't see the advantage over just casting them from your hand. There's also Bosium Strip, but unfortunately, it let's you wait on when you cast the spell, so we could wait until a higher stage to cast Obliterate, which I think goes infinite.
So, maybe restricting to artifacts is too ambitious. (although it would allow a lot of extra stages!) Perhaps just getting a stage or two would be good enough.
I did like the Stillmoon Cavalier / Deadapult combo, if we could figure out how to make Soul Foundry work.
As for the two spells with Kaho: I'm assuming that the creature we use for the stages can target Kaho and has haste. If we don't use that creatur directly o reset Kaho it probably wouldn't help in tying the cast to the stage. We can then play Kaho, cast a spell, play stage creature, bounce Kaho, play Kaho again. Both creatures can probably be bounced back to hand in the lower stage.
Going back to our layer optimization, I have an outline for 22 layers. Going back to Mortiphobia:
black shockland - 1
Boon Reflection - 2
Tamanoa - 3
Swallowing Plague - 5
Hana Kami - 5
Elvish Guidance - 6
Copy Enchantment - 7
Crystal Chimes - 8
Argivian Archaeologist - 8
tapped land - 9
Reality Spasm - 11
*something that taps for a blue mana* - 12
*something that recycles the above* - 13
Night Dealings - 14
Boon Reflection - 15
Tamanoa - 16
Underworld Dreams - 17
Curiosity - 18
Underworld Dreams - 19
Pain Magnification - 20
Five Alarm Fire - 21
World at War - 22
So, we just need a transition going from blue mana to Night Dealings that is worth at least two layers, but I haven't found one yet.
What I think works is to use the u/b storage land and have blue for free, then search up Reality Spasm with Night Dealings for 12 layers up to that.
At the end use the previously unused red mana as such:
Pain Magnification - 18
Fireball - 20
Savage Ventmaw - 21
World at War - 22
If there's a way to get the red mana by actually tapping something that would be another layer.
Does this all fit together? Is there a way to generate the 5th green for the Genesis Wave start or do we have to use a hardcast omniscience version? We are allowed to add cheap blue, but does it use too much space?
Edit: It seems to fit just fine:
2 Opalescence
3 Psychic Battle
4 Cowardice
5 Horobi, Death's Wail
6 Bloodbond March
7 Cephalid Shrine
8 Rasputin Dreamweaver
9 March of the Machines
10 Mindshrieker
11 Mimic Vat
12 Omniscience
13 Leyline of Anticipation
14 Riftsweeper
15 Splinter Twin
16 Crown of the Ages
17 Icatian Scout
18 Mortiphobia
19 Spellweaver Helix
20 Vampiric Touch
21 Vampiric Touch
22 Korozda Gorgon
23 Pyre Hound
24 Titania, Protector of Argoth
25 Creepy Doll
27 Spellshift
28 Kaho, Minamo Historian
29 Dreadship Reef
30 Watery Grave
31 Boon Reflection
32 Tamanoa
33 Swallowing Plague
34 Hana Kami
35 Elvish Guidance
36 Crystal Chimes
37 Argivian Archaeologist
38 Azorius Guildgate
39 Reality Spasm
40 Night Dealings
41 Underworld Dreams
42 Curiosity
43 Pain Magnification
44 Fireball
45 Savage Ventmaw
46 World at War
48 Scrambleverse
49 Selvala's Enforcer
50 Precursor Golem
51 Channel
52 Chancellor of the Tangle
53 Chancellor of the Tangle
54 Eye of Ramos
55 Memory Jar
56 Finest Hour
57 Thought Reflection
58 Copy Enchantment
59 Copy Enchantment
60 Copy Enchantment
But your version also gets 22 layers, and is probably more compact.
I would like to have used Aether Tide instead of Scorched Earth for an extra layer, using I guess Dryad Arbor to discard. But I guess Dryad Arbor goes infinite with Scrambleverse.
As for getting that extra mana layer at the end, I was looking at Honored Hierarch, but once it becomes renowned we can keep untapping it for mana. Sakiko, Mother of Summer gets two mana layers, but it only produces green.
I also considered Druids' Repository and transferring the charge counters onto something that could tap for mana, but I didn't find a card that couldn't already produce charge counters too cheaply. (There are storage lands that only get counters on their upkeep, but those are of course storage counters.)
[EDIT] There's Jeweled Amulet and Ice Cauldron, I suppose. Jeweled Amulet goes infinite with Mana Reflection and Scrambleverse. I gues Ice Cauldron won't go infinite since you can only cast the exiled card once, but for that same reason Druids' Repository won't help.
I was worried about about Druids' Repository as it is a donatable black source, but I guess as it is actually expensive enough to fill the repository that that's okay.
Sakiko, Mother of Summer would only give one layer as the size of the attack doesn't change between resolutions of the trigger.
Then we could have Pain Magnification transition into Rakdos's Return, which we cast using Boros Garrison. Then Abomination of Gudul can provide the discards.
Yes, no?
Edit: Augh, Rakdos's Return doesn't get Precursor Golem copies.
It occurs to me that a token that can tap to generate a mana by tapping is worth two layers, as you can untap it a bunch of times with Scrambleverse before it inevitably gets destroyed by Obliterate. So for example, it would be nice to add Mardu Ascendancy and a card that allowed Goblins to tap for red mana. Sadly, there is no such card.
Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury can produce an elf token that taps for green mana, but it is pretty awkward to try to fit a Planeswalker in at that point.
[EDIT] Maybe Mardu Ascendancy and Brightstone Ritual? Mardu Ascendancy puts a bunch of Goblin token triggers on the stack, and you resolve each one at a time; each time, you can use X black mana to cast Brightstone Ritual X times, getting X red mana. So that's two layers, I think.
In this case we can loop Brightstone Rituals by converting the red mana it produces down to Reality Spasm copies. Then we can generate the black necessary to get the Ritual out of the graveyard and cast it again. No Obliterates needed.
Actually, I really think that Crystal Chimes is worth two layers. We can destroy it to imprint it on a Mimic Vat, then untap the Mimic Vat using Scrambleverse a bunch of times to create a bunch of Crystal Chimes token abilities on the stack. Each time we resolve one, we can use Splinter Twin to create a lot of copies of Crystal Chimes, then we cast a Scrambleverse to untap them. We then sacrifice all of them, putting a bunch of return enchantment abilities on the stack, and then we resolve those abilities one at a time. So it does seem like two layers to me.
As far as getting another layer at the red mana level goes, I've kinda run dry of ideas. Sacrificing lands to say Lotus Vale is no good. Discarding a land to Mox Diamond is better, but then we can easily untap it.
[EDIT] Again, we could go back to Gelectrode to get access to +1/+1 counters, allowing us to remove Korozda Gorgon, Pyre Hound and Vampiric Touch. We need to replace Curiosity with Consecrated Sphinx, so we lose a layer, but we don't lose a Repercussion layer anymore. So if we could get more than one more layer using +1/+1 counters it would be an improvement. At the very least, we can remove Underworld Dreams and add Chasm Skulker, Corpsejack Menace, and Ion Storm to get the layer back. We would have saved a card slot, and added Consecrated Sphinx back to the deck for a slight benefit, although it is quite miniscule I admit.
For a "deals damage to target creature" that won't run afoul of Repercussion / Pain Magnification, we could use Winter Blast, although it still seems we can't add Repercussion due to triggering an oppoonent's Tamanoa.
We can get another layer by using Genesis Wave to retrieve the Crystal Chimes and delaying two colors until after the Pain Magnification. The problem is that the start gets very complicated, because both green and blue have to stay difficult to produce. I found one method that fits in exactly:
2 Opalescence
3 Psychic Battle
4 Cowardice
5 Horobi, Death's Wail
6 Bloodbond March
7 Cephalid Shrine
8 Rasputin Dreamweaver
9 March of the Machines
10 Mindshrieker
11 Mimic Vat
12 Omniscience
13 Leyline of Anticipation
14 Riftsweeper
15 Splinter Twin
16 Crown of the Ages
17 Icatian Scout
18 Mortiphobia
19 Spellweaver Helix
20 Vampiric Touch
21 Vampiric Touch
22 Korozda Gorgon
23 Pyre Hound
24 Titania, Protector of Argoth
25 Creepy Doll
27 Spellshift
28 Kaho, Minamo Historian
29 Molten Slagheap
30 Blood Crypt
31 Boon Reflection
32 Tamanoa
33 Swallowing Plague
34 Hana Kami
35 Elvish Guidance
36 Crystal Chimes
37 Genesis Wave
38 Night Dealings
39 Underworld Dreams
40 Curiosity
41 Pain Magnification
42 Aurelia's Fury
43 Boros Guildgate
44 Reality Spasm
45 Druids' Repository
46 World at War
48 Scrambleverse
49 Selvala's Enforcer
50 Precursor Golem
51 Pyromancer's Goggles
52 Painter's Servant
53 Chancellor of the Tangle
54 Chancellor of the Tangle
55 Chancellor of the Tangle
56 Chancellor of the Tangle
57 Channel
58 Hunting Triad
60 Memory Jar
The start works like this:
4x Chancellor of the Tangle, Channel (19 colorless, 2 green), Hunting Triad, Memory Jar. (11 colorless, 1 green, 7 cards, 3 elves)
Molten Slagheap, Elvish Guidance (9 Colorless), Tap land for colorless and 3 green (10 Colorless, 3 green), Genesis Wave with x=10.
Edit: Going the Gelectrode + Ion Storm route would make Hunting Triad too powerful, we would need another start to take advantage of that.
EDIT: Actually, no that doesn't work. To get a layer out of Corpsejack Menace we need to go through the Hyperstage between each Chasm Skulker trigger. But that will destroy the Chasm Skulkers that are about to retrieve their +1/+1 counters.
EDIT2: We should be able to cut Rasputin Dreamweaver and rely on Pyromancer's Goggles for all our cheap mana needs. Using Sylvan Offering we can cast a Genesis Wave for X=10 with 13 green mana floating and three cards in hand. That seems powerful enough to get going without Rasputin.
We can use that card slot to get Finest Hour back.
It's nothing new actually, it's just the final stage of the previous deck before you came up with Soul Foundry. Use a creature with protection from the hyperstage creature/creatures and cycling. We will use an unused color to target the new creature, then with cycling we will draw something that allows us to get that color back.
So for example, if we use Gelectrode in the hyperstage, we can use Bloated Toad as the cycler. We can use a Mox to get our chosen new color, say Mox Pearl. Advance Scout can target Bloated Toad for a white.
Unfortunately, I don't think targeting creatures is enough to transition into the hyperstage - we need to produce mana of the color the hyperstage uses. There are probably multiple ways to do this - either the card we draw can produce two or more colors, or we can include another creature with protection that can produce our desired color. If worst comes to worst, we can use Chrome Mox to get the color. The hyperstage has creatures with red and blue (Gelectrode) and green ((Titania, Protector of Argoth). We can remove Rasputin Dreamweaver, and replace Horobi, Death's Wail with Dismiss Into Dream, remove black creatures. So then we can use Mortiphobia to use black for the hyperstage, and then we can use white for the Bloated Toad stage (using say Oversoul of Dusk for the transition card). We could use say Unlikely Alliance to spend white to target creatures.
Before we start redoing the ending sequence, does everything work?
Chrome Mox should work if we can remove some colors of creatures from the Hyperstage. That also leaves card draw untouched.
Yeah, seems like it should work. Great Idea!
We might then even be able to chain stages using multiple colors. Using say Pyre Hound + Ion Storm can free up blue. Is there some alternative for Titania, Protector of Argoth to free green as well? The bounce creatures from later stages would need protection from all the targeting before, of course.