Unfortunately, we can't do the trick of hiding everything on the stack on every hyperstage transition, since the cards from our hand will be stuck on the stack for everything above where we do the trick. I suppose we might be able to make things work with Failure // Comply to retrieve the spells, but that's another card anyway.
Edit: Going for a slight improvement over the previous deck:
This looks like it also gets BB_{w^2 + w3 + 4} (X) where X is how much we can generate before combat. But, this time we can definitely draw out the deck before combat thanks to Floating-Dream Zubera and Increasing Confusion, and we should be able to get a bunch of proliferates from Increasing Confusion before the deck runs out.
Okay, I'm thinking again about going for a Busy Beaver megastage. After thinking about it for a bit, it doesn't seem like it would be as hard as I was initially expecting.
I think I'm missing something, I'm rusty with mimic vat tricks. It seems like that does a lot of wheel spinning between computations, rather than more computations.
Does that stage work properly? I recall there were some issues regarding the fact that unlike Cowardice or Horobi, Death's Wail, the possible delay between activating smuggler and getting kill/bounce triggers allowed for smuggling resources between transitions.
As for when we perform computations, I believe it works fine.
If we consider a typical stack:
Top level work
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition [consumes a few stage triggers to regenerate self and many stage triggers above]
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition
Megastage transition [consumes a few stage triggers to regenerate self and many hyperstage transitions above]
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition [X]
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition
Stage triggers
Hyperstage transition
Megastage transition
...
then it essentially doesn't matter where we do (or profit from) computations - say they're done at the point marked [X], then considering everything below [X] to be the "real" combo with everything above [X] considered as the top level work, it's still exactly the same structure as though the computations were being done at the top.
Is there a delay? When we resolve Nephalia Smuggler's activated ability, it flickers Bone Shredder, triggering its triggered ability to destroy/bounce something. So there are two abilities involved, but the latter triggers from the first, as opposed to an activated ability that we can wait on. So I'm not seeing any shenanigans at the moment.
And yeah, jfb said what I wanted to convey. Whether a computation requires a layer, stage, or hyperstage, in a megastage there will still be X hyperstages below it, and all of that recurses the computation, starting from the first layer below the computation.
Edit: Okay, now I'm wondering how far we can push this. Is a Busy Beaver gigastage possible? One problem is that are normal artifact creature stage can destroy an artifact like Goblin Boom Keg; the Bone Shredder setup was to get around that. Also, we need another instant/sorcery trigger mechanism, but both Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Spell Queller can be flickered easily by Nephalia Smuggler. We do have the possibility of another sweeper if we are using Kaervek's Spite and Worldpurge; a normal creature sweeper do recycle a creature is still available. But, we need to find another way to trigger the beneficial and destructive effects of a stage level.
Okay, what about additional stages? Worldpurge seems to kill off additional mana stages, I think. We do still have the possibility of token stages, but we can easily destroy any nonblack nonartifact creature. So we have black creatures available for token stages. Tsabo's Assassin is a possibility for a creature stage. Is there anything more restrictive? Dauthi Cutthroat can destroy creatures with shadow, but I don't what we can produce from a creature with shadow; unless we get mana from Chrome Mox, but I think we can already cheaply bounce creatures for Chrome Mox usage. Royal Assassin can destroy tapped creatures; is there some way to tap creatures in a limited fashion? Aysen Bureaucrats and Errant Doomsayers can tap creatures with power and toughness less than or equal to 2 respectively, so those are intriguing possibilities; but unfortunately Tsabo's Assassin is a 1/1, so we can't pair Royal Assasin with that, yet. So, I can only get one token stage, so far.
Of course, there is always the possibility of nontraditional, Stakfish-esque additional stages. We've only used blue and green so far I think, so white, red, and black mana are still available for additional stages. We just need to get creative. I'd like to use the red mana Guardian Zendikon stage that Stakfish came up with, but I still don't know how it works.
then considering everything below [X] to be the "real" combo with everything above [X] considered as the top level work, it's still exactly the same structure as though the computations were being done at the top.
Man my intuition for this situation is so off.
It feels like the first time I heard about the Well Ordering Principle (which is obviously false), being equivalent to the Axiom of Choice (which is obviously true). And I guess this statement is Zorn's lemma, (Who knows if that's true).
I'm leaning towards accepting it because of this 'fractal-ish' explanation with the exact same structure just zoomed out a meta-stage.
But there is something in my gut nagging at me saying it doesn't actually work, that I can't quite figure out what it is.
I think I was also intuitively thinking that the computations had to be done at the stage level, and maybe that's why it took so long to think of doing it this way.
Working on adding some layers at the end - there should be a lot of space still with 3 colors, opponent life and damage bouncing.
hopefully getting BB_{w^3 + w + 15} (BB_{w^3 + w + 11} (X)), where X is almost 60.
Edit: Okay, there does seem to be an issue. We need to make sure that, each time we do a hyperstage transition, we need to resolve some the stage below, so that we can't just restart the hyperstage transition indefinitely. I figured that we would need to resolve some of the stage to create a hasty token of Sakura-Tribe Scout (Walking Atlas should be Sakura-Tribe Scout, so that we can target it with Bone Shredder), but, if we have an extra green mana available, we can use that extra mana to restart the hyperstage, and create the hasty Sakura-Tribe Scout in the higher stage sometime. So, unfortunately that's not an impediment to restarting.
To restart the hyperstage transition, we need to put our exiled instants and Chatter of the Squirrel back into the graveyard, and put Spellweaver Volutes on them. I guess we also need to put at least two Volutes on Pull From Eternity, and bounce the ones that don't resolve first, so that we can get at least one Pull From Eternity before we resolve Kaervek's Spite (to create the higher stage) and at least one after (to put the exiled cards back into the graveyard, including Kaervek's Spite). So, there seem to be two main ways to make us have to resolve part of the lower stage to restart.
1. We need to resolve the part of the lower stage to put the instants/sorceries back into the graveyard. This seems to mean that we need to swap out Pull From Eternity for another card, and I only know Mirror of Fate and Riftsweeper as alternatives. However, both of those put the exiled cards into the library. Milling the cards after putting them into the library shouldn't be a problem, but know we have a way of putting instants into the library. I can think of two ways to deal with this: We can either never be able to draw or fetch an instant from the library (this makes the start very difficult, but perhaps possible with Genesis Wave, or some instant/sorcery with an X in the casting cost that draws, which we can never retrieve from the graveyard), or we can remove Wormfang Behemoth, so that we will never have instants in our hand while the computation is proceeding. Without Wormfang Behemoth, the only way we wouldn't lose artifacts and enchantments to the graveyard/library is either be able to fetch both of them from the graveyard, or maybe fetch one of them, and maybe be able to squeeze the other in our hand? But, it looks like we need to bring our two lifelands back to our hand, so we have 5 spots available for other cards. I think we need more than 5 enchantments, but perhaps we can fit in our artifacts, if we swap Vedalken Orrery for [c}Leyline of Anticipation[/c] (with the idea that if we start a computation without Opalescence, March of the Machines will remain on the battlefield, and Coat of Arms will die rather quickly), and just live without Panharmonicon and Soul Separator. Then we can use the 5 spots for Coat of Arms, Goblin Boom Keg, Mimic Vat, Spellweaver Helix, and one artifact for mana. We do have to strain a bit to fit the artifacts in our hand, but it may be worth it, since if we can return artifacts from the graveyard, either we have to get rid of Black Lotus, or we will moot all colors right from the beginning.
2. The other option is that we need to resolve the lower stage to put Spellweaver Volute on our instants. This seems unnecessary if we can have Spellweaver Volute and Copy Enchantment in our hands after resolving the hyperstage transition. So, either again we get rid of Wormfang Behemoth, so that our we won't have cards in our hand after Kaervek's Spite, or we make it so that we can't bring general enchantments in general to our hand. (We can bring nonblack creatures to our hand, so this really only applies to Spellweaver Volute, Bloodbond March, Dralnu's Crusade, and possibly Opalescence, although we can animate that by copying it with Copy Enchantment.) So instaed we use something that brings them back to the battlefield. Academy Rector comes to mind.
So, a lot of potential options available, none of them particularly great, so I'm unsure of which one to go with right now.
Oh, quick question: What happens if we resolve a Kaervek's Spite, and there are some creatures with the effect of Together Forever applied to them? It looks like they will go back to our hand after the Kaervek's Spite is fully resolved, so they will remain in our hand and not get discarded.
To answer that rules question, no. Resolving a Kaervek's Spite is not useful as it only does 5 to somebody. Losing everything is an additional cost so any dies triggers will go on the stack above the Spite. So casting the spite is where we get our board wipe.
In any case, there is no way to get a card sacrificed and discarded to the same Spite, as all of the costs are paid simultaneously.
Ah, I see I see. So it's the same thing, if we use a Together Forever on one of our permanents, it will go to our hand after the Kaervek's Spite is cast, so it won't get discarded.
I didn't realize that the board wipe happened when we cast Kaervek's Spite, but I guess it doesn't matter much. When we flashback Chatter of the Squirrel, we get a whole bunch of Spellweaver Volute triggers, and they resolve one at a time. The board wipe happens earlier than I thought, but it still happens after all the Spellweaver Volutes that are resolved previously to the one on Kaervek's Spite, and before all the ones that are resolved after. The only difference is the relation with the life loss. I guess another question is whether we can counter Kaervek's Spite with Cephalid Shrine? I know a permanent leaving the battlefield still triggers off of other permanents leaving at the same time, but this seems different. I suppose I would guess no.
Oh I hadn't considered that. Yeah the Spite can't be countered by the shrine, the same way sacrificing young pyromancer to flashback cabal therapy wont give you an elemental.
Perhaps simplest to stick with with Cephalid Shrine and add Amulet of Safekeeping. Or, just a lifelink creature so that the opponent gains more life than he loses.
ah, just donating a Cephalid Shrine is the cheapest, we don't need to add a lifelink creature then. Nice spot!
Edit: Thinking about the deck some more, there seems to be a problem with using Pull From Eternity to bring back Bone Shredder, so that we can make copies with Soul Separator. If we do this, then Bone Shredder will be stuck in our graveyard, and I don't see a convenient way to get it back to our hand or the battlefield to be flickered by Nephalia Smuggler.
I thought maybe we could have a second Bone Shredder, so that one could be on the battlefield, and the other in the graveyard. But, it seems like we get a free usage of Soul Separator after every hyperstage transition, and that is probably too profitable. So, I'm not sure how to make this work.
Another way to rebuild the higher stage in the hyperstage transition is using Vitalize, untapping our tapped Nephalia Smugglers. But, I imagine Vitalize kills off the possibility of additional token stages, unless the stage creature sacrifices itself when we use it. That doesn't seem to be the case for the stage creatures that we have available. I'd like to keep our additional stage, but at the moment I don't see how to save it.
I thought the idea was to never let the Bone Shredder permanently die thanks to together forever?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how the smuggler stage works
That's the idea, so the attempt to use Pull From Eternity to build up the stage during the hyperstage transition by bringing back Bone Shredder from exile doesn't work. Adding a second Bone Shredder gives us an extra kill of Nephalia Smuggler after the hyperstage transition, so we can profit from the transition rather than have to pay.
This should hopefully get us to BB_{w^3 + 15} (BB_{w^3 + 11} (X)), where X is almost 60.
Edit: Hmm, perhaps we can get additional stages if we use something more restrictive than Vitalize, like [c}Battle Cry[/c]. We can use something like Northern Paladin for the primary stage, adding in Cowardice to bounce creatures to our hand as needed. Northern Paladin can be made black using Dralnu's Crusade and Artificial Evolution. This leaves space available for additional stages. I don't see how to add more than one, but it looks like we can add Tsabo's Assassin, for instance.
Edit: Oh wait, Cowardice doesn't allow for additional token stages, so long as we have instants that can target arbitrary creatures cheaply. So, what we would like would be a setup that doesn't have either Cowardice or Together Forever. We could do that with a creature that naturally taps to return a creature to our hand, and possibly use it in a Soul Foundry deck. Wizard Mentor is that sort of creature, but it targets arbitrary creatures. I don't know a creature that taps to return a more specific type of creature to our hand.
Edit: Hmm, I guess there are a few more specific creature bouncers, like Snow Hound, Razorfin Abolisher, and Quillmane Baku. Snow Hound only targets blue and green creatures, but unfortunately Snow Hound isn't either of those. The only way I can see to make it into a stage is to either Sleight of Mind the text, or Lace the color of Snow Hound. Either way will at least allow us to target any creature with a color. That really only leaves space for colorless creatures, and assuming we have a way to bounce artifacts cheaply, that doesn't leave much; Blinding Drone can target, but it doesn't bounce.
Razorfin Abolisher only targets creatures with a counter on them, but I don't see a good restriction that still hits Razorfin Abolisher. Something that restricts power/toughness might be good, or only hitting blue, but I don't see how to restrict counters to either of those. Quillmane Baku seems to have intriguing possibilities, but I don't see how to make it work.
Edit: Hmm, is there a card that can put an artifact or land from our graveyard into our library, but not an instant?
Oh, very good point! Hmm, I think the best answer is not to allow the opponent to get mana at all. Show and Tell can be worked around with a different start, perhaps with Channel and Genesis Wave. But, how to deal with Walking Atlas? If there's something that puts lands onto the battlefield, but requires mana, that would be nice. Patron of the Moon requires a mana, but it puts lands onto the battlefield tapped - that's fine for our lifelands, but not for the Forest.
I don't think this is fatal, but we may need to search around a bit.
Edit: Swell of Growth might be nice, but it gives a toughness boost, which is no good.
Edit: Okay, I guess we could use Firebrand Ranger to put our basic land into play untapped, which costs us a green mana. Then we could use Patron of the Moon for our lifegain lands.
But, I think the following might be better: Just have one land, and use Titania, Protector of Argoth to return it to the battlefield for our hyperstage mana. Then, in the megastage transition, we bring the land back to our hand, and discard it using Gerrard's Verdict, to gain 3 life. That locks us into using Acorn Harvest or Flash of Defiance for our megastage flashback sorcery, rather than the more versatile uses we can get from K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth.
With only the one land, I switched over to a Sanguine Sacrament / Thrmming Stone start. Should get us to BB_{w^3 + 14} (BB_{w^3 + 10} (X)), where X is almost 60.
Yep, Firebrand Ranger can work, but I decided to go with a construction that uses Gerrard's Verdict to gain our life back. That keeps us from adding more lands though, so if we want to use lands in the layer section, we may have to use Firebrand Ranger. That's really not the best though, we have to combine it with Harvest Wurm and Patron of the Moon to make it work, and it moots green, which would be really nice for the layer section, mainly because of Animist's Awakening. So it would be nice to find a better card, but we can use Firebrand Ranger if need be.
Edit: Oh, we can't use Blue Sun's Zenith that late in the layer sequence, since we can redraw it with Wild Research for blue mana, but we also can't put it before Wild Research, since it would trigger Tolarian Kraken. Removing it drops us to BB_{w^2 + 13} (BB_{w^2 + 9} (X)).
Looks like I'm a bit late to the megastage party. Using Spellweaver Volute and Spellweaver Helix to trigger the respective hyper- and megastage transitions seems great. We can probably make that work. As long as we can profit from a BB computation once in a fixed number of megastage transitions we get enough scaling from that to count. I actually was already making use of that in some earlier versions, where we could only donate one thing every hyperstage-transition. I think of it as the computation requiring a floating N hyperstage (or now megastage) resources to set up. As long as we get those resources back we don't lose any hyper-stage levels and everything is fine
I do see some problems with the candidates for the substage, though:
Bone Shredder presumably ends up in our hand after going through the hyper-/megastage transition. From there we can cast it to get extra bounce/kill triggers. This is analogous to mana/life based substages giving us an extra mana/life through the transition. To make it work we need to spend that extra resource to put the transition back on the stack.
I don't think we have any way to require spending such a bounce/kill layer. The other possible fix is to have Bonce Shredder not get to our hand, but finding substitutes for Together Forever and/or Kaervek's Spite seems hard.
The other substage, with Exorcist and Cowardice has the problem that Illusionist's Bracers equip ability targets. So we can use that to bounce the Exorcist virtually for free and go infinite. I don't think there are any non-equipment options to copy the ability that wouldn't copy Mimic Vat's ability. So I don't know how we could make that work.
Okay, I have a couple ideas for those problems. For Bone Shredder perhaps we could not allow it to be bounced, and have an instant which retrieves creature cards from the graveyard, to be used in the hyperstage transition. This is another thing that moots further creature stages, but it seems like that ship has sailed.
Instead of Illusionist's Bracers, I think we can use Psychic Battle or Grip of Chaos? This wouldn't get us more copies of the destroy ability, but we only need one I think. The inclusion of Illusionist's Bracers was to use it for extra layers, in particular Wild Research, but we can of course forgo that.
After the Sanguine Sacraments, we use Disciple of Deceit to discard an Exorcist and fetch a Sanguine Sacrament to start the chain again. We can tap Disciple of Deceit by sacrificing an Herbal Poultice, and letting it be destroyed using Exorcist, and then untap it with Vitalize. After the Herbal Poultice chain, we can draw it with Angelheart Vial, hooking into the damage chain. This hopefully gets us to around BB_{w^3 + 14} (BB_{w^3 + 10} (60)).
Edit: Oh, there's an issue with bringing our Exorcist back from exile. I guess I had a vague idea that we could go to a higher stage and use Pull From Eternity to bring it back, but that means that the Exorcist will be in the graveyard in the higher stage, and we won't be able to get it out.
Hmm, what about adding another Exorcist? Since we only get one destroy ability per tap, we won't be able to destroy both Exorcists, so no extra tokens. We'll have an extra Exorcist to bounce, but that doesn't seem like a big deal. So we go to the higher stage with one Exorcist in exile, and one in our hand or on the battlefield. Then we use a Pull from Eternity to bring the one in exile back to the graveyard, and use the other Exorcist to bring them both back to the battlefield.
After the higher stage, both Exorcists will be in our hand, but we have to resolve down to the next destroy ability to get a hasted token back.
Hmm, but how are we using the Bloodbond March triggers in the lower stage? So maybe this doesn't work.
Another idea is to use something like Eternal Scourge. After exiling an Exorcist, we can exile an Eternal Scourge to bring the Exorcist back to the graveyard. Normally I think this would work, but here we only have one destroy ability, so it looks like we would have to forgo making an Exorcist token to destroy an Eternal Scourge, which is no good.
The only other idea I have is to switch from Pull From Eternity to either Mirror of Fate or Riftsweeper. Those seem like solid options, except they can put cards into our library, including our instants. So, I think to save our computations, we need to get rid of Wormfang Behemoth, so that our hand is empty during a computation. We can give the opponent our artifacts and enchantments before a resolution of Kaervek's Spite, but not {c]Mox Pearl[/c]. I guess we can just cast it? No, we're using Kaervek's Spite at every stage level, so that won't work. If we can use Kaervek's Spite just for computations, and use another instant to recycle our hyperstage mana, then we could use the trick of putting things on the stack. For now, I only see getting artifacts back from the graveyard. Argivian Find seems fine - there doesn't seem to be a reason not to get back our enchantments as well, since we're not trying to preserve a Chrome Mox for later.
This seems like it can work, but it seems to be suboptimal with regards to the start and the additional layers. We don't want to be able to bring back Black Lotus, so we have to take that out. Perhaps switching from a Genesis Wave start to one with Replenish will save us from being awash with Chancellor of the Tangles.
Is there some idea we can use to save Pull From Eternity? I'm not missing another bring-back-from-exile card, am I?
Edit: Hmm, we need a way to keep the opponent alive during computations. Just adding a lifelink creature would do. Removing Kurkesh drops us to 11 layers.
However, it looks like we can do better by switching out the main part of the deck away from Gerrard's Verdict. Doing so looks like it adds another 3 cards, so we get:
This hopefully gets us to BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (60)), nipping out the Radiant Fountain deck by a little bit.
Edit: Oh, we can't actually fully refill our library! As far as I can tell, we can only shuffle in our artifacts and our Sanguine Sacraments. If I counted correctly, that's a total of 18 cards, so we can get BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (18)) damage. That puts the Gerrard's Verdict deck a bit behind the Radiant Fountain deck now.
Unfortunately, we can't do the trick of hiding everything on the stack on every hyperstage transition, since the cards from our hand will be stuck on the stack for everything above where we do the trick. I suppose we might be able to make things work with Failure // Comply to retrieve the spells, but that's another card anyway.
Edit: Going for a slight improvement over the previous deck:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Starfield of Nyx
8 Wrong Turn
9 Hellion Eruption
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
16 Spellweaver Volute
17 Pull from Eternity
Utility: Creatures
18 Bloodbond March
19 Cephalid Shrine
20 Soul Separator
21 Mana Crypt
22 Draconian Cylix
23 Vampire Envoy
24 Aegis Automaton
25 Bala Ged Scorpion
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
R Transition
28 Spellweaver Helix
29 Worldfire
30 Gravitic Punch
31 Hungry for More
32 Hungry for More
33 Restore
34 Blood Moon
35 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
36 Panharmonicon
37 Wormfang Behemoth
U stage
38 Stolen By the Fae
39 Recoup
40 Chrome Mox
G stage
41 Thousand Winds
42 Storm Front
43 Shiv's Embrace
44 Karoo Meerkat
45 Karoo Meerkat
46 Guardian of the Guildpact
47 Aegis Automaton
48 Illusionist's bracers
49 Magnetic Theft
Initial setup
50 Black Lotus
51 Lotus Petal
52 Channel
53 Genesis Wave
54 Omniscience
Layers
55 The Kami War
56 Increasing Confusion
57 Widespread Panic
58 Dreamscape Artist
59 God-Pharoah's Gift
Misc Utility
60 Floating-Dream Zubera
This looks like it also gets BB_{w^2 + w3 + 4} (X) where X is how much we can generate before combat. But, this time we can definitely draw out the deck before combat thanks to Floating-Dream Zubera and Increasing Confusion, and we should be able to get a bunch of proliferates from Increasing Confusion before the deck runs out.
So, let's start with:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Soul Separator
19 Mox Sapphire
Smuggler Stage
20 Nephalia Smuggler
21 Bone Shredder
22 Together Forever
23 Mimic Vat
Volute Hyperstage
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Pull From Eternity
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Forest
28 Harvest Wurm
29 Walking Atlas
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldpurge
32 Divine Congregation
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Panharmonicon
36 Radiant Fountain
37 Glimmerpost
38 Wormfang Behemoth
So, we start with a Nephalia Smuggler / Bone Shredder primary stage, like we've been trying to do in the past. So the idea there is a typical Bloodbond March / Mimic Vat stage.
For the hyperstage, we cast Chatter of the Squirrel to trigger Pull From Eternity, which can repeatedly retrieve Bone Shredder to be used with Soul Separator, to get kills/bounces of Nephalia Smuggler as we resolve the stage. We can also trigger the casting of Kaervek's Spite, which can destroy a Forest to be retrieved by Harvest Wurm. Of course, we can also use Kaervek's Spite for computations.
For the megastage, we have a typical Worldpurge setup.
So, how does this look? Any major problems?
Could you explain more what the line would be?
I like switching to worldpurge after as needed.
As for when we perform computations, I believe it works fine.
If we consider a typical stack:
then it essentially doesn't matter where we do (or profit from) computations - say they're done at the point marked [X], then considering everything below [X] to be the "real" combo with everything above [X] considered as the top level work, it's still exactly the same structure as though the computations were being done at the top.
And yeah, jfb said what I wanted to convey. Whether a computation requires a layer, stage, or hyperstage, in a megastage there will still be X hyperstages below it, and all of that recurses the computation, starting from the first layer below the computation.
Edit: Okay, now I'm wondering how far we can push this. Is a Busy Beaver gigastage possible? One problem is that are normal artifact creature stage can destroy an artifact like Goblin Boom Keg; the Bone Shredder setup was to get around that. Also, we need another instant/sorcery trigger mechanism, but both Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Spell Queller can be flickered easily by Nephalia Smuggler. We do have the possibility of another sweeper if we are using Kaervek's Spite and Worldpurge; a normal creature sweeper do recycle a creature is still available. But, we need to find another way to trigger the beneficial and destructive effects of a stage level.
Okay, what about additional stages? Worldpurge seems to kill off additional mana stages, I think. We do still have the possibility of token stages, but we can easily destroy any nonblack nonartifact creature. So we have black creatures available for token stages. Tsabo's Assassin is a possibility for a creature stage. Is there anything more restrictive? Dauthi Cutthroat can destroy creatures with shadow, but I don't what we can produce from a creature with shadow; unless we get mana from Chrome Mox, but I think we can already cheaply bounce creatures for Chrome Mox usage. Royal Assassin can destroy tapped creatures; is there some way to tap creatures in a limited fashion? Aysen Bureaucrats and Errant Doomsayers can tap creatures with power and toughness less than or equal to 2 respectively, so those are intriguing possibilities; but unfortunately Tsabo's Assassin is a 1/1, so we can't pair Royal Assasin with that, yet. So, I can only get one token stage, so far.
Of course, there is always the possibility of nontraditional, Stakfish-esque additional stages. We've only used blue and green so far I think, so white, red, and black mana are still available for additional stages. We just need to get creative. I'd like to use the red mana Guardian Zendikon stage that Stakfish came up with, but I still don't know how it works.
Man my intuition for this situation is so off.
It feels like the first time I heard about the Well Ordering Principle (which is obviously false), being equivalent to the Axiom of Choice (which is obviously true). And I guess this statement is Zorn's lemma, (Who knows if that's true).
I'm leaning towards accepting it because of this 'fractal-ish' explanation with the exact same structure just zoomed out a meta-stage.
But there is something in my gut nagging at me saying it doesn't actually work, that I can't quite figure out what it is.
Working on adding some layers at the end - there should be a lot of space still with 3 colors, opponent life and damage bouncing.
Edit: Okay, here's a starting attempt:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Soul Separator
19 Mox Sapphire
20 Nephalia Smuggler
21 Bone Shredder
22 Together Forever
23 Mimic Vat
Volute Hyperstage
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Pull From Eternity
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Forest
28 Harvest Wurm
29 Walking Atlas
Helix Megastage
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldpurge
32 Divine Congregation
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Panharmonicon
36 Radiant Fountain
37 Glimmerpost
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Tsabo's Assassin
40 Swarm Guildmage
Getting Started
41 Black Lotus
42 Show and Tell
43 Omniscience
44 Floating-Dream Zubera
45 Goblin Bushwhacker
46 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
47 Amulet of Vigor
48 Animist's Awakening
49 Recoup
50 Arbiter of the Ideal
51 Tolarian Kraken
52 Blue Sun's Zenith
53 Angelheart Vial
54 Justice
56 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
57 Pain Magnification
58 Mage Slayer
59 Harmonic Prodigy
60 random lifelink creature
hopefully getting BB_{w^3 + w + 15} (BB_{w^3 + w + 11} (X)), where X is almost 60.
Edit: Okay, there does seem to be an issue. We need to make sure that, each time we do a hyperstage transition, we need to resolve some the stage below, so that we can't just restart the hyperstage transition indefinitely. I figured that we would need to resolve some of the stage to create a hasty token of Sakura-Tribe Scout (Walking Atlas should be Sakura-Tribe Scout, so that we can target it with Bone Shredder), but, if we have an extra green mana available, we can use that extra mana to restart the hyperstage, and create the hasty Sakura-Tribe Scout in the higher stage sometime. So, unfortunately that's not an impediment to restarting.
To restart the hyperstage transition, we need to put our exiled instants and Chatter of the Squirrel back into the graveyard, and put Spellweaver Volutes on them. I guess we also need to put at least two Volutes on Pull From Eternity, and bounce the ones that don't resolve first, so that we can get at least one Pull From Eternity before we resolve Kaervek's Spite (to create the higher stage) and at least one after (to put the exiled cards back into the graveyard, including Kaervek's Spite). So, there seem to be two main ways to make us have to resolve part of the lower stage to restart.
1. We need to resolve the part of the lower stage to put the instants/sorceries back into the graveyard. This seems to mean that we need to swap out Pull From Eternity for another card, and I only know Mirror of Fate and Riftsweeper as alternatives. However, both of those put the exiled cards into the library. Milling the cards after putting them into the library shouldn't be a problem, but know we have a way of putting instants into the library. I can think of two ways to deal with this: We can either never be able to draw or fetch an instant from the library (this makes the start very difficult, but perhaps possible with Genesis Wave, or some instant/sorcery with an X in the casting cost that draws, which we can never retrieve from the graveyard), or we can remove Wormfang Behemoth, so that we will never have instants in our hand while the computation is proceeding. Without Wormfang Behemoth, the only way we wouldn't lose artifacts and enchantments to the graveyard/library is either be able to fetch both of them from the graveyard, or maybe fetch one of them, and maybe be able to squeeze the other in our hand? But, it looks like we need to bring our two lifelands back to our hand, so we have 5 spots available for other cards. I think we need more than 5 enchantments, but perhaps we can fit in our artifacts, if we swap Vedalken Orrery for [c}Leyline of Anticipation[/c] (with the idea that if we start a computation without Opalescence, March of the Machines will remain on the battlefield, and Coat of Arms will die rather quickly), and just live without Panharmonicon and Soul Separator. Then we can use the 5 spots for Coat of Arms, Goblin Boom Keg, Mimic Vat, Spellweaver Helix, and one artifact for mana. We do have to strain a bit to fit the artifacts in our hand, but it may be worth it, since if we can return artifacts from the graveyard, either we have to get rid of Black Lotus, or we will moot all colors right from the beginning.
2. The other option is that we need to resolve the lower stage to put Spellweaver Volute on our instants. This seems unnecessary if we can have Spellweaver Volute and Copy Enchantment in our hands after resolving the hyperstage transition. So, either again we get rid of Wormfang Behemoth, so that our we won't have cards in our hand after Kaervek's Spite, or we make it so that we can't bring general enchantments in general to our hand. (We can bring nonblack creatures to our hand, so this really only applies to Spellweaver Volute, Bloodbond March, Dralnu's Crusade, and possibly Opalescence, although we can animate that by copying it with Copy Enchantment.) So instaed we use something that brings them back to the battlefield. Academy Rector comes to mind.
So, a lot of potential options available, none of them particularly great, so I'm unsure of which one to go with right now.
Oh, quick question: What happens if we resolve a Kaervek's Spite, and there are some creatures with the effect of Together Forever applied to them? It looks like they will go back to our hand after the Kaervek's Spite is fully resolved, so they will remain in our hand and not get discarded.
In any case, there is no way to get a card sacrificed and discarded to the same Spite, as all of the costs are paid simultaneously.
I didn't realize that the board wipe happened when we cast Kaervek's Spite, but I guess it doesn't matter much. When we flashback Chatter of the Squirrel, we get a whole bunch of Spellweaver Volute triggers, and they resolve one at a time. The board wipe happens earlier than I thought, but it still happens after all the Spellweaver Volutes that are resolved previously to the one on Kaervek's Spite, and before all the ones that are resolved after. The only difference is the relation with the life loss. I guess another question is whether we can counter Kaervek's Spite with Cephalid Shrine? I know a permanent leaving the battlefield still triggers off of other permanents leaving at the same time, but this seems different. I suppose I would guess no.
So it looke like we need a useful counterspell variant
Arcane denial/plasm capture to also support extra phases from like sphinx of the second sun
Avoid fate/outwit are pretty narrow if we want that.
Countersquall/ionize make us pay life to counter it, but I don't think that ends up being useful?
Similar for Dismal Failure.
hmm not as fruitful as I thought, most add-ons are like bounce or draw.
(also just donating a cephalid shrine works too.)
Edit: Thinking about the deck some more, there seems to be a problem with using Pull From Eternity to bring back Bone Shredder, so that we can make copies with Soul Separator. If we do this, then Bone Shredder will be stuck in our graveyard, and I don't see a convenient way to get it back to our hand or the battlefield to be flickered by Nephalia Smuggler.
I thought maybe we could have a second Bone Shredder, so that one could be on the battlefield, and the other in the graveyard. But, it seems like we get a free usage of Soul Separator after every hyperstage transition, and that is probably too profitable. So, I'm not sure how to make this work.
Another way to rebuild the higher stage in the hyperstage transition is using Vitalize, untapping our tapped Nephalia Smugglers. But, I imagine Vitalize kills off the possibility of additional token stages, unless the stage creature sacrifices itself when we use it. That doesn't seem to be the case for the stage creatures that we have available. I'd like to keep our additional stage, but at the moment I don't see how to save it.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how the smuggler stage works
Edit: So right now, we're looking at:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Sapphire
19 Nephalia Smuggler
20 Bone Shredder
21 Together Forever
22 Mimic Vat
Volute Hyperstage
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Pull From Eternity
25 Vitalize
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Forest
28 Harvest Wurm
29 Walking Atlas
Helix Megastage
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldpurge
32 Divine Congregation
33 Acorn Harvest
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Panharmonicon
36 Radiant Fountain
37 Glimmerpost
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Black Lotus
40 Show and Tell
41 Omniscience
42 Floating-Dream Zubera
Layers
43 Lightkeeper of Emeria
44 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
45 Amulet of Vigor
46 Animist's Awakening
47 Recoup
48 Arbiter of the Ideal
49 Tolarian Kraken
50 Blue Sun's Zenith
51 Angelheart Vial
52 Justice
53 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
54 Pain Magnification
55 Mage Slayer
Misc Utility
56 Harmonic Prodigy
This should hopefully get us to BB_{w^3 + 15} (BB_{w^3 + 11} (X)), where X is almost 60.
Edit: Hmm, perhaps we can get additional stages if we use something more restrictive than Vitalize, like [c}Battle Cry[/c]. We can use something like Northern Paladin for the primary stage, adding in Cowardice to bounce creatures to our hand as needed. Northern Paladin can be made black using Dralnu's Crusade and Artificial Evolution. This leaves space available for additional stages. I don't see how to add more than one, but it looks like we can add Tsabo's Assassin, for instance.
Edit: Oh wait, Cowardice doesn't allow for additional token stages, so long as we have instants that can target arbitrary creatures cheaply. So, what we would like would be a setup that doesn't have either Cowardice or Together Forever. We could do that with a creature that naturally taps to return a creature to our hand, and possibly use it in a Soul Foundry deck. Wizard Mentor is that sort of creature, but it targets arbitrary creatures. I don't know a creature that taps to return a more specific type of creature to our hand.
Edit: Hmm, I guess there are a few more specific creature bouncers, like Snow Hound, Razorfin Abolisher, and Quillmane Baku. Snow Hound only targets blue and green creatures, but unfortunately Snow Hound isn't either of those. The only way I can see to make it into a stage is to either Sleight of Mind the text, or Lace the color of Snow Hound. Either way will at least allow us to target any creature with a color. That really only leaves space for colorless creatures, and assuming we have a way to bounce artifacts cheaply, that doesn't leave much; Blinding Drone can target, but it doesn't bounce.
Razorfin Abolisher only targets creatures with a counter on them, but I don't see a good restriction that still hits Razorfin Abolisher. Something that restricts power/toughness might be good, or only hitting blue, but I don't see how to restrict counters to either of those. Quillmane Baku seems to have intriguing possibilities, but I don't see how to make it work.
Edit: Hmm, is there a card that can put an artifact or land from our graveyard into our library, but not an instant?
I don't think this is fatal, but we may need to search around a bit.
Edit: Swell of Growth might be nice, but it gives a toughness boost, which is no good.
Edit: Okay, I guess we could use Firebrand Ranger to put our basic land into play untapped, which costs us a green mana. Then we could use Patron of the Moon for our lifegain lands.
But, I think the following might be better: Just have one land, and use Titania, Protector of Argoth to return it to the battlefield for our hyperstage mana. Then, in the megastage transition, we bring the land back to our hand, and discard it using Gerrard's Verdict, to gain 3 life. That locks us into using Acorn Harvest or Flash of Defiance for our megastage flashback sorcery, rather than the more versatile uses we can get from K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth.
Edit: Deck update:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
Smuggler Stage
19 Exorcist
20 Cowardice
21 Illusionist's Bracers
22 Sigarda's Aid
23 Mimic Vat
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Pull From Eternity
26 Vitalize
27 Chatter of the Squirrel
28 Forest
29 Titania, Protector of Argoth
Helix Megastage
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldpurge
32 Divine Congregation
33 Gerrard's Verdict
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Panharmonicon
37 Wormfang Behemoth
Getting Started
38 Black Lotus
39 Lotus Petal
40 Channel
41 Genesis Wave
42 Omniscience
Layers
43 Sanguine Sacrament
44 Sanguine Sacrament
45 Sanguine Sacrement
46 Sanguine Sacrement
47 Wild Research
48 Arbiter of the Ideal
49 Tolarian Kraken
50 Blue Sun's Zenith
51 Angelheart Vial
52 Justice
53 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
54 Pain Magnification
55 Mage Slayer
56 Harmonic Prodigy
57 Thrumming Stone
58 Mirror Gallery
59 Drafna's Restoration
60 Floating-Dream Zubera
With only the one land, I switched over to a Sanguine Sacrament / Thrmming Stone start. Should get us to BB_{w^3 + 14} (BB_{w^3 + 10} (X)), where X is almost 60.
most of the other versions of this effect also draw cards... or are no good for other reasons like Broken bond.
Edit: Oh, we can't use Blue Sun's Zenith that late in the layer sequence, since we can redraw it with Wild Research for blue mana, but we also can't put it before Wild Research, since it would trigger Tolarian Kraken. Removing it drops us to BB_{w^2 + 13} (BB_{w^2 + 9} (X)).
I do see some problems with the candidates for the substage, though:
Bone Shredder presumably ends up in our hand after going through the hyper-/megastage transition. From there we can cast it to get extra bounce/kill triggers. This is analogous to mana/life based substages giving us an extra mana/life through the transition. To make it work we need to spend that extra resource to put the transition back on the stack.
I don't think we have any way to require spending such a bounce/kill layer. The other possible fix is to have Bonce Shredder not get to our hand, but finding substitutes for Together Forever and/or Kaervek's Spite seems hard.
The other substage, with Exorcist and Cowardice has the problem that Illusionist's Bracers equip ability targets. So we can use that to bounce the Exorcist virtually for free and go infinite. I don't think there are any non-equipment options to copy the ability that wouldn't copy Mimic Vat's ability. So I don't know how we could make that work.
Okay, I have a couple ideas for those problems. For Bone Shredder perhaps we could not allow it to be bounced, and have an instant which retrieves creature cards from the graveyard, to be used in the hyperstage transition. This is another thing that moots further creature stages, but it seems like that ship has sailed.
Instead of Illusionist's Bracers, I think we can use Psychic Battle or Grip of Chaos? This wouldn't get us more copies of the destroy ability, but we only need one I think. The inclusion of Illusionist's Bracers was to use it for extra layers, in particular Wild Research, but we can of course forgo that.
Edit: Trying to get more out of Thrumming Stone:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
Smuggler Stage
19 Exorcist
20 Cowardice
21 Psychic Battle
22 Mimic Vat
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Pull From Eternity
25 Vitalize
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Forest
28 Titania, Protector of Argoth
29 Wormfang Behemoth
Helix Megastage
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldpurge
32 Divine Congregation
33 Gerrard's Verdict
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Panharmonicon
Getting Started
37 Black Lotus
38 Lotus Petal
39 Channel
40 Genesis Wave
41 Omniscience
Layers
42 Sanguine Sacrament
43 Sanguine Sacrament
44 Sanguine Sacrement
45 Sanguine Sacrement
46 Disciple of Deceit
47 Herbal Poultice
48 Herbal Poultice
49 Herbal Poultice
50 Herbal Poultice
51 Angehlheart Vial
52 Justice
53 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
54 Pain Magnification
55 Mage Slayer
56 Harmonic Prodigy
57 Thrumming Stone
58 Mirror Gallery
59 Mortuary
60 Floating-Dream Zubera
After the Sanguine Sacraments, we use Disciple of Deceit to discard an Exorcist and fetch a Sanguine Sacrament to start the chain again. We can tap Disciple of Deceit by sacrificing an Herbal Poultice, and letting it be destroyed using Exorcist, and then untap it with Vitalize. After the Herbal Poultice chain, we can draw it with Angelheart Vial, hooking into the damage chain. This hopefully gets us to around BB_{w^3 + 14} (BB_{w^3 + 10} (60)).
Edit: Hmm, I guess Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient will give another layer to Herbal Poultice. So if we swap it in for Floating-Dream Zubera, we go up to BB_{w^3 + 15} (X), where X is what we can generate before combat.
Edit: Oh, there's an issue with bringing our Exorcist back from exile. I guess I had a vague idea that we could go to a higher stage and use Pull From Eternity to bring it back, but that means that the Exorcist will be in the graveyard in the higher stage, and we won't be able to get it out.
Hmm, what about adding another Exorcist? Since we only get one destroy ability per tap, we won't be able to destroy both Exorcists, so no extra tokens. We'll have an extra Exorcist to bounce, but that doesn't seem like a big deal. So we go to the higher stage with one Exorcist in exile, and one in our hand or on the battlefield. Then we use a Pull from Eternity to bring the one in exile back to the graveyard, and use the other Exorcist to bring them both back to the battlefield.
After the higher stage, both Exorcists will be in our hand, but we have to resolve down to the next destroy ability to get a hasted token back.
Hmm, but how are we using the Bloodbond March triggers in the lower stage? So maybe this doesn't work.
Another idea is to use something like Eternal Scourge. After exiling an Exorcist, we can exile an Eternal Scourge to bring the Exorcist back to the graveyard. Normally I think this would work, but here we only have one destroy ability, so it looks like we would have to forgo making an Exorcist token to destroy an Eternal Scourge, which is no good.
The only other idea I have is to switch from Pull From Eternity to either Mirror of Fate or Riftsweeper. Those seem like solid options, except they can put cards into our library, including our instants. So, I think to save our computations, we need to get rid of Wormfang Behemoth, so that our hand is empty during a computation. We can give the opponent our artifacts and enchantments before a resolution of Kaervek's Spite, but not {c]Mox Pearl[/c]. I guess we can just cast it? No, we're using Kaervek's Spite at every stage level, so that won't work. If we can use Kaervek's Spite just for computations, and use another instant to recycle our hyperstage mana, then we could use the trick of putting things on the stack. For now, I only see getting artifacts back from the graveyard. Argivian Find seems fine - there doesn't seem to be a reason not to get back our enchantments as well, since we're not trying to preserve a Chrome Mox for later.
This seems like it can work, but it seems to be suboptimal with regards to the start and the additional layers. We don't want to be able to bring back Black Lotus, so we have to take that out. Perhaps switching from a Genesis Wave start to one with Replenish will save us from being awash with Chancellor of the Tangles.
Is there some idea we can use to save Pull From Eternity? I'm not missing another bring-back-from-exile card, am I?
Alternatives to Eternal Scourge are Squee, the Immortal and Misthollow Griffin. So I think we could use the griffin together with Homarid Spawning Bed and a blue mana source. I don't think Goblin Boom Keg or Exorcist can become blue, so we can't sacrifice those too easily.
Looking at the layers a bit: Thrumming Stone + Mortuary goes infinite with the Exorcist stage by providing a self-refreshing Bloodbond March layer.
So, we have:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
19 Mox Sapphire
Smuggler Stage
20 Exorcist
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Mimic Vat
24 Misthollow Griffin
25 Homarid Spawning Bed
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Pull From Eternity
28 Vitalize
29 Chatter of the Squirrel
30 Forest
31 Titania, Protector of Argoth
32 Wormfang Behemoth
Helix Megastage
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Worldpurge
35 Divine Congregation
36 Gerrard's Verdict
37 Acorn Harvest
38 Acorn Harvest
39 Panharmonicon
Getting Started
40 Black Lotus
41 Lotus Petal
42 Channel
43 Genesis Wave
44 Omniscience
Layers
45 Sanguine Sacrament
46 Sanguine Sacrament
47 Sanguine Sacrement
48 Sanguine Sacrement
49 Disciple of Deceit
50 Herbal Poultice
51 Angehlheart Vial
52 Justice
53 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
54 Pain Magnification
55 Mage Slayer
56 Harmonic Prodigy
57 Thrumming Stone
58 Mirror Gallery
59 Drafna's Restoration
60 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
That should get us to BB_{w^3 + 12} (X).
Since we needed another 3 cards, I figured I would look at a Riftsweeper version:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
Smuggler Stage
19 Exorcist
20 Cowardice
21 Psychic Battle
22 Mimic Vat
23 Riftsweeper
24 Shriekhorn
Volute Hyperstage
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Argivian Find
27 Vitalize
28 Chatter of the Squirrel
29 Forest
30 Titania, Protector of Argoth
31 Spellweaver Helix
32 Worldpurge
33 Divine Congregation
34 Gerrard's Verdict
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Acorn Harvest
37 Panharmonicon
Getting Started
38 Chancellor of the Tangle
39 Channel
40 Sands of Delirium
41 Replenish
42 Omniscience
43 Primal Surge
One less card, but fewer prospects in the final layers it seems.
Edit: I guess if we're going to Primal Surge in the Riftsweeper deck, we might as well just add two more Chancellor of the Tangles, saving life and cards from hand.
Mage Slayer's equip ability targets, so we can't use that with Cowardice.
Edit: Hmm, we need a way to keep the opponent alive during computations. Just adding a lifelink creature would do. Removing Kurkesh drops us to 11 layers.
Edit: I suppose we can replace Chatter of the Squirrel with Angelfire Ignition. (Forest can be replaced with Taiga.) That saves the need for an extra card, and Kurkesh can come back.
Edit: Aw, fiddlesticks - Gerrard's Verdict messes up Brallin, Skyshark Rider. So, we may as well take out Brallin and Pain Magnification, losing 3 layers. Replacing them with Sentry Oak and Sylvan Echoes gets us to BB_{w^3 + 9} BB_{w^3 + 8} (X)).
However, it looks like we can do better by switching out the main part of the deck away from Gerrard's Verdict. Doing so looks like it adds another 3 cards, so we get:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
19 Mox Sapphire
20 Mox Emerald
21 Exorcist
22 Cowardice
23 Psychic Battle
24 Mimic Vat
25 Misthollow Griffin
26 Homarid Spawning Bed
Volute Hyperstage
27 Spellweaver Volute
28 Pull From Eternity
29 Vitalize
30 Angelfire Infusion
31 Taiga
32 Harvest Wurm
33 Firebrand Ranger
34 Wormfang Behemoth
Helix Megastage
35 Spellweaver Helix
36 Worldpurge
37 Divine Congregation
38 Flash of Defiance
39 Flash of Defiance
40 Glimmerpost
41 Radiant Fountain
42 Patron of the Moon
43 Panharmonicon
44 Black Lotus
45 Channel
46 Genesis Wave
47 Omniscience
Layers
48 Sanguine Sacrament
49 Sanguine Sacrement
50 Sanguine Sacrement
51 Disciple of Deceit
52 Tolarian Kraken
53 Angehlheart Vial
54 Justice
55 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
56 Pain Magnification
57 Fathom Fleet Stormjack
Misc Utility
58 Harmonic Prodigy
59 Thrumming Stone
60 Mirror Gallery
which appears to get us BB_{w^3 + 10} (X)).
We could do better perhaps with better cards to recycle our lands.
Edit: Oh, at this point we might as well go with 4x Sanguine Sacrament into BLue Sun's Zenith.
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
19 Mox Sapphire
20 Mox Emerald
21 Exorcist
22 Cowardice
23 Psychic Battle
24 Mimic Vat
25 Misthollow Griffin
26 Homarid Spawning Bed
Volute Hyperstage
27 Spellweaver Volute
28 Pull From Eternity
29 Vitalize
30 Angelfire Infusion
31 Taiga
32 Harvest Wurm
33 Firebrand Ranger
34 Wormfang Behemoth
Helix Megastage
35 Spellweaver Helix
36 Worldpurge
37 Divine Congregation
38 Flash of Defiance
39 Flash of Defiance
40 Glimmerpost
41 Radiant Fountain
42 Panharmonicon
43 Patron of the Moon
44 Black Lotus
45 Channel
46 Genesis Wave
47 Omniscience
Layers
48 Sanguine Sacrament
49 Sanguine Sacrament
50 Sanguine Sacrement
51 Sanguine Sacrement
52 Blue Sun's Zenith
53 Angehlheart Vial
54 Justice
55 Brallin, Skyshark Rider
56 Pain Magnification
57 Fathom Fleet Stormjack
Misc Utility
58 Thrumming Stone
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Floating-Dream Zubera
hopefully getting us to BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 6} (60)).
Edit: Oh, Noggle Ransacker is better, getting us to BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (52)).
Edit: Lore Broker is a bit better still, bumping things to BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (53)).
Edit: I think we can get 10 layers for the Gerrard's Verdict version.
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility: Enchantments/Artifacts
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Dual Nature
14 Stern Proctor
Utility: Spells
15 Thousand-Year Storm
Utility: Creatures
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
18 Mox Pearl
19 Mox Sapphire
Smuggler Stage
20 Exorcist
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Mimic Vat
24 Misthollow Griffin
25 Homarid Spawning Bed
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Pull From Eternity
28 Vitalize
29 Chatter of the Squirrel
30 Forest
31 Titania, Protector of Argoth
32 Wormfang Behemoth
Helix Megastage
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Worldpurge
35 Divine Congregation
36 Gerrard's Verdict
37 Acorn Harvest
38 Acorn Harvest
39 Panharmonicon
Getting Started
40 Black Lotus
41 Lotus Petal
42 Channel
43 Genesis Wave
44 Omniscience
Layers
45 Sanguine Sacrament
46 Sanguine Sacrament
47 Sanguine Sacrement
48 Sanguine Sacrement
49 Disciple of Deceit
50 Herbal Poultice
51 Spiritual Focus
52 Pain Magnfication
53 Justice
54 Fathom Fleet Stormjack
55 Harmonic Prodigy
56 Thrumming Stone
57 Mirror Gallery
58 Drafna's Restoration
59 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
60 Floating-Dream Zubera
Instead of Angelheart Vial, we link to Spiritual Focus.
This hopefully gets us to BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (60)), nipping out the Radiant Fountain deck by a little bit.
Edit: Oh, we can't actually fully refill our library! As far as I can tell, we can only shuffle in our artifacts and our Sanguine Sacraments. If I counted correctly, that's a total of 18 cards, so we can get BB_{w^3 + 10} (BB_{w^3 + 8} (18)) damage. That puts the Gerrard's Verdict deck a bit behind the Radiant Fountain deck now.