Maybe we can fit Cowardice in again? I don't think it breaks the computation we have now, as we need to cast all of our instants in order to start a computation anyway.... though we can target anything super easily so its not useful...
Yeah, there are various advantages to having Cowardice and Worldpurge, but they allow us to bounce creatures very easily to our hand, so we can't get extra stages the usual way.
I was thinking maybe of using untap abilities. Maybe something like:
We get many main phases thanks to World at War.
Each main phase is followed by many combat phases thanks to Moraug, Fury of Akoum.
Each combat phase, we can untap all snow permanents many times thanks to Jorn, God of Winter.
We untap a snow-covered land.
We can pay a snow mana to activate Icebind Pillar, getting many copies.
We can untap Farmstead Gleaner to add +1/+1 counters, getting many copies
We can remove a counter to draw a card, using Soul Diviner
So that could be an improvement, although we have to get rid of Crucible of the Spirit Dragon, since that gets counters too cheaply. Also, this requires more card slots than we have.
Also, the Farmstead Gleaner would die to worldfire in between so it's not worth as many layers. And while I don't think its a problem in this line but Jorn does have another side, Kaldring, the rimestaff, that is kind of dangerous.
I tried to get snow mana to work too (and energy...), and while cards like frost augur are interesting, I haven't been able to find a stage/layer that works.
Anything above worldfire is useless right? Not that I found anything, but did notice that some cards would have to be above worldfire to work at all.
Yeah, we can't get a double layer for Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient and Doubling Season doubling the number of +1/+1 counters, but I think we still would get a layer over the current sequence, if we could get white mana at the bottom. Hmmm, is Crucible of the Spirit Dragon + Amulet of Vigor the only way we have of getting white mana off lands? That's somewhat restricting, if so.
Snow mana and energy counters are possible remaining resources to use, but there are of course not that many cards that use them; energy counters in particular are hard to use since almost all the cards automatically supply you with more energy counters. Another possibility is colorless mana in the Nihilistic Glee deck, since we can use black and green mana as our generic mana. But again, not so many ways to use colorless mana.
Yeah, stages and layers have to be after (below) the hyperstage to be significant.
Yeah, I think needing restoreworldfire and uproot means we need a land that can't tap once for the mana, and if they natrually ETB tapped (like Fountain of Cho), untapping them is kind of awkward as we couldn't use amulet of vigor. so I think crucible + amulet is the best way we have to make a land tap for white.
Another way for a land to be safe is the MDFCs that are lands on the back as they wouldn't be restore targets. But we'd need a sorcery speed land drop to actually play them...
edit: If the opponent had one basic mountain then oblivion sower would be nice but it can't hit our own lands.
Possibly a competing 9 layer sequence for the Nihilistic Glee deck:
0: The fourth step of The First Iroan Games puts a Gold token onto the battlefield
1: Proliferating will trigger many copies of The First Iroan Games.
2: Shuffling will trigger many copies of Widespread Panic.
3: A trigger of Magda, Brazen Outlaw creates many Treasure tokens to be sacrificed
4: Triggering Magda gets many copies thanks to Harmonic Prodigy
5: Activating Icebind Pillar will get many copies
6: We can untap many copies of Coldsteel Heart.
7: A combat phase will get many untaps.
8: A main phase will be followed by many combat phases.
9: We get many main phases.
This is using the Glowspore Shaman version of the deck. We put a Glowspore Shaman into play, putting a land from the graveyard into the library, then we pay 2 life to Nihilistic Glee to draw the land. Then we can discard the land to Spitting Image, triggering Retract to gain our life back.
Oh right we need worldfire to destroy the land to remake the red. We can't have it in hand(well wormfang behemoth-ed) and in play at the same time. Any second land breaks it though.
I thought perhaps we could do better by using an artifact land instead of Crucible of the Spirit Dragon; then we could have it come into play with March of the Machines on the battlefield, and we could get two layers thanks to Dual Nature and Doubling Season. We could use Journey for the Elixir to not allow it to be brought in from the graveyard. Unfortunately, we can still bounce it back to our hand with Retract, and put back into play with Show and Tell. To avoid this, we would need to use an artifact land that comes into play tapped, and not have Amulet of Vigor... but then the token copies would just come into play tapped, so we would only get mana from Animist's Awakening untapping the original artifact land. So it doesn't look like this works.
Hmm, there's maybe something there though I can't quite see a way to make it work... Possibly a comes into play tapped artifact manland? Though none of those exist.
Something like living lands or nature's revolt can also give us a bunch of land tokens, though living lands is limited to forests and something more general like nature's revolt interferes with the worldfire stage, unless we could use simian spirit guide for the red, but I don't see how to make that work.
Hmm, Living Lands seems like it has potential, being limited to just Forests; however, I don't see yet how we would use that to get green mana, and then use white mana earlier on.
They are certainly possibilities, but probably not helpful ones. Song of the dryads is another forest-maker, but it can save our stuff from computation so its no good.
in terms of the color sequence there are a few swamps/forests that tap for white, most notably the dual lands, shock lands, triomes, and murmuring bosk
Indatha Triome is at least forced to come into play tapped, so there might be something there.
I guess there's the possibility of using Kormus Bell to animate a Scrubland. But, we would want Journey for the Elixir rather than Restore so that we can't return the Scrubland from the graveyard, and we would also want Uproot so that we could put the Scrubland back into the library, so that it could be brought back by Animist's Awakening. And we can't have both Journey for the Elixir and Uproot.
Which I think still has us at the deck from #3667 as the best we have?
That Void stalker slot is annoying, can we combine the ideas and use thrummingbird as the cmc 2 blue creature and attack outlet into something like a saga?
Edit: hmm, sagas and doubling season combo more powerfully than we'd like...
Edit2:
I guess Prying blade (+academy manufactor?) is another route we could take... agh, oops, we would also need a way to equip at instant speed, as we don't get main phases in between Moraug combats.
What's the issue with Tomb of annihalation? It lets players sac things but I don't see why that's bad if venturing is done on combat damage, one of the top layers.
Yeah, any of the instant equippers work, (we probably don't want a white creature) I was thinking Sigarda's Aid. Though taking an extra card slot is not ideal.
I was thinking maybe of using untap abilities. Maybe something like:
We get many main phases thanks to World at War.
Each main phase is followed by many combat phases thanks to Moraug, Fury of Akoum.
Each combat phase, we can untap all snow permanents many times thanks to Jorn, God of Winter.
We untap a snow-covered land.
We can pay a snow mana to activate Icebind Pillar, getting many copies.
We can untap Farmstead Gleaner to add +1/+1 counters, getting many copies
We can remove a counter to draw a card, using Soul Diviner
So that could be an improvement, although we have to get rid of Crucible of the Spirit Dragon, since that gets counters too cheaply. Also, this requires more card slots than we have.
Also, the Farmstead Gleaner would die to worldfire in between so it's not worth as many layers. And while I don't think its a problem in this line but Jorn does have another side, Kaldring, the rimestaff, that is kind of dangerous.
I tried to get snow mana to work too (and energy...), and while cards like frost augur are interesting, I haven't been able to find a stage/layer that works.
Anything above worldfire is useless right? Not that I found anything, but did notice that some cards would have to be above worldfire to work at all.
Snow mana and energy counters are possible remaining resources to use, but there are of course not that many cards that use them; energy counters in particular are hard to use since almost all the cards automatically supply you with more energy counters. Another possibility is colorless mana in the Nihilistic Glee deck, since we can use black and green mana as our generic mana. But again, not so many ways to use colorless mana.
Yeah, stages and layers have to be after (below) the hyperstage to be significant.
Another way for a land to be safe is the MDFCs that are lands on the back as they wouldn't be restore targets. But we'd need a sorcery speed land drop to actually play them...
edit: If the opponent had one basic mountain then oblivion sower would be nice but it can't hit our own lands.
0: The fourth step of The First Iroan Games puts a Gold token onto the battlefield
1: Proliferating will trigger many copies of The First Iroan Games.
2: Shuffling will trigger many copies of Widespread Panic.
3: A trigger of Magda, Brazen Outlaw creates many Treasure tokens to be sacrificed
4: Triggering Magda gets many copies thanks to Harmonic Prodigy
5: Activating Icebind Pillar will get many copies
6: We can untap many copies of Coldsteel Heart.
7: A combat phase will get many untaps.
8: A main phase will be followed by many combat phases.
9: We get many main phases.
Though I think that sequence works in the other deck, as we can use Curse of bounty to not burn a green creature in Jorn.
Something like living lands or nature's revolt can also give us a bunch of land tokens, though living lands is limited to forests and something more general like nature's revolt interferes with the worldfire stage, unless we could use simian spirit guide for the red, but I don't see how to make that work.
in terms of the color sequence there are a few swamps/forests that tap for white, most notably the dual lands, shock lands, triomes, and murmuring bosk
Indatha Triome is at least forced to come into play tapped, so there might be something there.
Which I think still has us at the deck from #3667 as the best we have?
That Void stalker slot is annoying, can we combine the ideas and use thrummingbird as the cmc 2 blue creature and attack outlet into something like a saga?
Edit: hmm, sagas and doubling season combo more powerfully than we'd like...
It's a shame Tomb of Annihilation moots venturing as Yuan-Ti Malison is basically what we want with either of the other two dungeons.
Edit2:
I guess Prying blade (+academy manufactor?) is another route we could take... agh, oops, we would also need a way to equip at instant speed, as we don't get main phases in between Moraug combats.
As for Prying blade; do Magnetic theft or Leonin Shikari work?
edit: Hoard robber (+academy manufactor?) lets us save a slot over the equipment.
Prying Blade needs Sigarda's Aid, and Hoard Robber needs Academy Manufactor, so it looks like they both lose a slot compared to [c}Search the Premises[/c].
Though the tokens dying to march of the machines either way is kinda disappointing.