Right, it'll have to be March of the Machines. That makes it harder to use the Ruin Ghost layer for the start. We mostly care about that layer in section II to generate the input for the first computation. The plan is to cast 2 SSAs in that section. The second one has to be cast with the floating Foundry activation on the stack, so comes after the Tyvar untap and MotM has to be in play for that. So the second cast won't get the layer: Great Furnace just dies immediately. But I don't see a reason that the first SSA cast would need to have MotM in play, so we can get the layer there. Not optimal, but could be worse.
Edit: Also all the treasures generated by SSA die, so the second cast does essentially nothing before the computation anyway. It can only provide the triggers to scale after.
Now for some better news: When I suggested Valgavoth's Lair I failed to appreciate that it also allows us to get the layer from Precursor Golem triggers: Anikthea, Hand of Erebos can create a scaling amount of zombie lands. All of them get enchanted by SSA copies and then sacrificed to a Metalworker with Brutal Suppression
The other thing to be careful about is the fact that without a MotM in play, we can only have 1 panharmnicon, and thus only put 2 creatures under foundry.
But I think this is fine.
Riftsweeper is needed in all 5 sections; is drawn in sections I,II,III, and put under foundries in each
Drake is needed in all 5 sections; it is drawn in sections I,II,IV, and put under foundries in II and IV
Trickster is needed in 4 sections; it is drawn in sections I and III, and put under foundries in each
Necromancer is needed in 3 sections; it is drawn in sections II and III, and put under a foundry in section III.
Thus:
Section I's foundry has riftsweeper,trickster
Section II's foundry has riftsweeper,drake
Section III's foundry has riftsweeper,drake,trickster,necromancer
Section IV's foundry has drake
So this works with only getting 1 panharmonicon before needing to make the section II foundry.
hm, we want to use Tyvar in Section V to get Riftsweeper back. So we can't use it in Section IV to untap Foundry. I think that means we can't use Foundry to float Drake there, as we also need to put that Drake (or a copy) into play. But floating that Drake with Bloodbond March should work.
Yeah, seems like BBM should work. We also want tyvar in section 5 for scaling from the computation with access to scaling colourless mana, too.
Unrelated, I tried having a go at finding a stage combo in Pauper for fun. You're very limited on options for flash and copying, but there is Teach by example, and a few storm cards.
First, a black mana allows for casting Reaping the graves, returning 4 copies of Revolutionist.
They can be discarded to Putrid imp, to cast them and return a spell; 1 can return reaping and 3 for other spells. One can be Battle Hymn for cheap red to sustain the madness costs (which can be scaled with something like Goblin surprise) whenever needed. Revolutionist can then be sacced to Carrion feeder to be ready for the next reaping.
3 black mana then can then allow for returning 4 copies of Teach by example to hand, 2 other spells, and 3 revolutionists in hand ready to fetch back more; and thus allow for copying the next spell 7 times.
Then; can form a symmetric alternating copy stage, with a catalyst of green mana / white mana / life, 1-for-1 exchangable
S triggers: cast Sprouting vines, get many copies due to storm
C triggers: cast Cloudshift, get copies equal to the number of active Teach by examples, which can be made to be 7 by spending 3 black
Checking we can get enough black mana and enough copies of cloudshift to sustain:
At the top level:
Have many S triggers on the stack.
Resolve 1 to fetch the Plains; then say we can cast C with N active Teach by examples.
The original can flicker a Revolutionist to return the original cloudshift to hand once it resolves, to avoid the need to counter it.
Thus have N-1 C's to do other stuff with.
Top one flickers Elves of deep shadow for black, after having cast a Prismatic strands earlier in the turn to not lose life. (alternatives like Bog witch or Basal sliver go infinite with reaping).
That black casts Reaping the graves for 3 Teach by examples.
The remaining N-2 C's flicker Revolutionists to return another Teach by example; ending up with N+1 teachs active after resolving down.
Then we resolve anther S and repeat, building up teaches for each S we had. Then extras can be used for more black or other flickers.
Thus, when building up the stage, we can always do that process to convert Ss to Cs starting from an initial 7 Cs; then use extra Cs to flicker Disruptive Pitmages to counter original Ss and Cs (and Revolutionists to return them). Extra Cs can then also be used to convert catalyst W 1-for-1 into life and then green through Mournful Zombie and Blightsoil Druid; and make extra black.
Then as for layers to fuel it; could have something like a blue mana casts Ghostly flicker to flicker the plains a lot through a lot of built up Teach by example copies, untapping a tapped island like Glacial Floodplain creates a lot of blue mana from High tide, and then you could get 12 such untaps through 4 copies of Civic Gardener + 4 copies of Initiate's Companion with double strike
Potentially there could be a second stage through something like Twiddle untapping Irrigation ditch, alternating with some blue card draw spell like Opt. But then I'm not sure how to generate initial blue to fuel the stage. I suppose even with a limited amount of blue, without a layer scaling it, like from Vault robber is still better than manual layers - as you'd get essentially layers equal to the number of expendable creatures.
Not sure how to get started or what turn is viable to get started on.
I feel like Lotus petals could help accelerate something out early (but not sure about turn 1 still), but would be incompatible with cheap card draw (in particular for the potential blue stage). More limited graveyard recursion like Glowspore shaman is an extra thing that needs to be flickered which seems to make us just slightly short of being able to scale cloudshift copies and teach by example copies enough.
24 cards added to the deck: 13 were creatures
room for 8 more random creatures
3 treasures used for startup
-> 18 more blue available for running blue stage
~= F_{w+18}(F_w(24)) turn 3
(24 here is life + G/W; approx layers of first stage)
probably optimisable by replacing some of the duplicates of spells by extra return-a-spell creatures
can probably keep chaining impulse draw and returning hymn until ready to use 2 more Lotus petals for Carrion feeder + Reaping the graves (+Village bell ringer kinda free here), scale red some more, then can start using treasures for the other stuff.
If artifact retrieval is hard there should be a layer there at the end: use Wizard's Rockets to get X blue mana for each creature exiled with Master Skald.
Edit: Honestly, I'd be surprised if it isn't possible to start turn 1. It might require ignoring the creature preference and stacking red rituals, but it should be the goal. Cards like Chromatic Sphere can filter mana to colors we need while replacing themselves.
from here should be possible to chain more recursion creatures into hymns to get everything going
filter with a star or petal into Twiddle for a Wizard's rockets activation at some point for remaining filtering needed
F_{w2+1}(X) where X = 3+num expendable creatures (for 3 other wizards rockets)
Some interesting cards:
- Clockwork Fox can get 53 x2 draws for the start without the blue cost
- Dross Scorpion can untap the first Wizard's Rockets without needing that additional filter artifact
- Feldon's Canes are worth 4 rockets each
After spending some time looking through pauper cards I'm very impressed you managed to find stages in there!
I think we can clean up the W/G stage, removing the need for life, black, creature death and creature retrieval.
To remove life we use Flicker of Fate for the flicker spell. That lets us use 2 copies to move Lush Growth onto the untapped Plains, tap it for green, then move Lush Growth back onto a tapped land we wont sacrifice.
To reuse Revolutionist without black mana, and without it going through the graveyard we use Retraction Helix. During setup make sure that N creatures have gained that ability. We won't scale N, but a fixed, reasonably large number is good enough.
Now a flickering a Village Bell-Ringer gets us N bounces of Revolutionist, and thus we can increase the number of active Teach by Examples by N.
Resolving X copies of Flicker of Fate gets us NX active teaches, so resolving X copies of Sprouting Vines on top of that gets us N^X. When building the stage we skim a Bell-Ringer flicker of the top of the flicker-layers to make sure the next flicker-layer we put on the stack also has N copies. Like before we only start scaling that number when we return later.
Now life, black and creature death/recovery are free to build on top of the blue stage. Flickering Dusk Legion Zealot in response to a layer of Twiddle copies can turn our life into blue, so life can be used as input for the blue stage.
It looks like we can almost get a black stage with something along the lines of Reaping the Graves, Terror and Jewel-Eyed Cobra. But we don't have flash to replay the cobra and I can't make it work.
We can still get some extra layers though:
- A lifelinking Aerie Ouphes with power boosted by Bond Beetle can shoot at Aviation Pioneer thopters to gain X life. Conveniently persist brings back the Ouphes, losing lifelink in the process.
- Spending a black mana to cast Toxin Analysis gets X copies that can grant lifelink to the Ouphes
- Sacrificing Wizard's Rockets gets us X black mana. We can reuse the rockets by sacrificing Myr Retriever to Acolyte of Aclazotz. There's no other way the Myr can die yet as it doesn't fly, so Ouphes cannot shoot it down. We have to spend one of the black on Reaping the Graves to bring the Myr back. We can only play Rockets at sorcery speed, so before we can make any use of them the Acolyte ability has to resolve. This costs 1 of the opponents life.
- We can give the opponent X life by casting Harvest Pyre, with all the copies hitting a Grollub (that also doesn't fly.) Harvest Pyre could kill Myr directly, but that only makes sense for the original, because of the sorcery speed restriction on rockets. We can cast Harvest Pyre once for each spare card that isn't necessary to operate the combo.
The combo can stay fully functional after exiling the cards listed under Setup. All card types can be turned into Harvest Pyre fuel, so a start that gets the full 34 casts should be very doable.
We can get that black stage after all: Use a layer of Feign Death copies to prepare death recovery for a Jewel-Eyed Cobra. Then use a layer of Terror copies to trigger the recovery and get a treasure. As a byproduct Byway Courier can generate clues, X of which can be turned into X blue mana.
So this stage even keeps life free for a potential layer. I have not figures out how to use that yet
Edit: Okay, plan for the layers:
- Play and use Wizard's Rockets to get X black mana.
--- Use Blur of Blades to kill Myr Retriever to get the rockets back, at the cost of 2 life.
--- The Myr is an artifact, so it dodges Terror and has no other way to die yet.
- Sacrifice Bottle Golems that have been buffed by Bond Beetle to gain X life.
--- The only useful way to do this is using Acolyte of Aclazotz, at the cost of 1 life of the opponent.
--- It's an artifact, so it dodges Terror. Killing it with Blur puts its power to 0, rendering the effect useless.
- Hit Grollub with a bunch of Harvest Pyre copies to give the opponent X life.
--- We can do that once per spare card.
There's a dangerous line were Acolyte can serve as an infinite layer of terrors for the black stage. But that keeps putting abilities on the stack that want to make the opponent lose 1 life each. So while we can get an arbitrary amount of those, and of creatures and everything else, we cannot clear the stack without putting the opponent to 0. I don't think there is a way to actually deal a big amount of damage with a dirty stack.
The top stage becomes non-green and loses the native storm. But I think we are still able to scale properly using just the number of active Teach by Examples. Always increase the layer you are refreshing to the scaling amount and create a fixed number of copies for all the layers on top of that, based on the number of Retraction Helixed creatures that are around.
The blue stage can only untap Saprazzan Skerry one time each time it is bounced. If it runs out of depletion counters it gets stuck in the graveyard. Out Cold provides infinite targets for Rewind.
The green stage produces blue with extra Reclaim copies: Move Skerry from graveyard to library, draw with an Out Cold clue, put in play and untap twice with Rewind - costs 3 blue to produce 4. Dueling Rapier is the only target for Turn to Dust here, so a layer of Turn to Dust copies can only destroy it once to add green. It then needs a layer of Reclaim before we can replay it (it has flash!)
The black stage produces green with extra Feign Death copies on Chainflail Centipede. A cast of Turn to Dust can then use up the Feigns on both Centipedes to turn 1 green into 2. Getting the Centipedes back without Feign would cost black to play them, so this is the only way to make use of them. Similarly the Freebooter could be replayed using Reclaim and draw. But it also costs a black, so nothing can be gained by doing this.
Wizard's Rockets now goes infinite because it can be reused with Reclaim. So we have to skip that layer and go from 1 life to 1 black mana directly with Vesper Ghoul. The Bottle Golems and Harvest Pyre layer still work.
Getting started becomes harder because Chromatic Sphere would go infinite. I believe it is still possible, but haven't worked out a line. Grotag Siege-Runner + Gleaming Barrier can turn life into colored mana without requiring a black to play Vesper Ghoul first. If that costs too much red for the start we can fall back on something like Halo Scarabs that is worse in the long run.
Edit: Huh, using Scaled Herbalist and an untap layer to put a land into play actually goes infinite:
- start with land and herbalist tapped, 2 white available
- use 1 white to get 2+ copies of Plow Through Reito. Resolve 1 to get plains to hand.
- use 1 white to get 2+ copies of Call to Glory. Resolve 1 to untap herbalist.
- tap herbalist, put plains into play, tap for white
- resolve Call and Plow to untap herbalist and return plains to hand
- tap herbalist, put plains into play, tap for white
We're back at the start and could have used extra copies to increase our numbers.
Nice work! Jack-o'-Lantern is another possible option for initial filtering; playing and cycling it is 1 more mana compared to Chromatic star which looks like the previous line still works
It would be nice to get something that doesn't need the exile.
I've worked out a start that doesn't need to exile any cards. While working on the end of it I also noticed several things that can likely be changed at the beginning to set up better. But this should be a solid baseline.
In the first phase we keep drawing into new cards to increase our creature count, produce red mana and get access to more playable cards.
Play Mountain, them 4x Rite of Flame for 11 red.
Play Akroan Crusader, then start targeting it with targeting draw spells to generate creature tokens:
Play 4x Crimson Wisps and Ancestral Anger, each replacing the last card in hand. We are at 5 red with 6 creatures.
Play Glimpse the Impossible to get back up to 3 playable cards. (2 red)
Play Battle Hymn to get back to 6 red. (6 red, 2 cards)
Play 3x Ancestral Anger and Expedite, each replacing itself. (2 red, 10 creatures)
Play Battle Hymn. (10 red)
Play Glimpse the Impossible. (7 red, 3 cards)
Play Expedite. (6 red, 11 creatures)
Play Ardent Elementalist, returning Battle Hymn, then play the Hymn. (12 red, 2 cards, 12 creatures)
Play Teach by Example, then Glimpse the Impossible, copying it. (7 red, 6 cards)
Play Might of the Meek, replacing itself. (6 red, 13 creatures)
Play Teach by Example, Teach by Example, then Battle Hymn, getting 2 copies.
We are at 39 red, with 13 creatures and 3 playable cards.
Play Revolutionist, returning Teach by Example.
Play the Teach by Example, followed by Glimpse the Impossible, getting a copy.
We are at 29 red, with 14 creatures and 7 playable cards. We are ready to transition into the second phase, where we use our life to reuse the instants and sorceries already in our graveyard. To do that we need some mana of colors other than red.
Play Grotag Siege-Runner and Gleaming Barrier, sac the Siege-Runner, to destroy Barrier, crack the treasure. (24 red, 5 cards, 1 colored, 18 life)
Play Vesper Ghoul, play Expedite giving it haste, tap it. (21 red, 4 cards, 1 colored, 17 life, 15 creatures)
Play Vesper Ghoul, play Expedite giving it haste, tap it. (18 red, 3 cards, 1 colored, 16 life, 16 creatures)
Play Village Bell-Ringer, retap the Ghouls. (16 red, 2 cards, 2 colored, 14 life, 17 creatures)
Retraction Helix, targeting crusader. (1 card, 1 colored, 18 creatures, 1/1 bounce)
We now have 1 hasty creature that can tap to bounce other creatures. We'll keep track of both the untapped bouncers and the total, since we will untap them regularly. To replay an instant/sorcery card out of our graveyard we can now spend a bounce on the Elementalist and play it for 4 red. This works at sorcery speed. We can also use the bounce to replay creatures. Once we have a discard outlet we can bounce Revolutionist instead of Elementalist to replay instants at instant speed.
Replay Elementalist via bounce, returning Helix. (12 red, 1 card + Helix, 0/1 bounce)
Play Cloudshift to flicker Bell-Ringer, retap Ghouls. (Only Helix in hand, 1/1 bounce, 2 colored, 12 life)
Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (6 red, 0/1 bounce)
Play Retraction Helix and get a copy to turn 2 hasty tokens into bouncers. (no cards, 2/3 bounce, 1 colored)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (18 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (16 red, 3/3 bounce, 2 colored, 10 life)
Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (10 red, 2/3 bounce)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (40 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (38 red, 3/3 bounce, 3 colored, 8 life)
2x Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (26 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Retraction Helix via bounce, getting 2 copies to gain 3 more hasty bouncers. (22 red, 3/6 bounce, 2 colored)
Replay Glimpse the Impossible via bounce. (15 red, 3 cards, 2/6 bounce)
Play Earsplitting Rats, no discard because the playable cards are actually exiled. (12 red, 2 cards, 1 colored, 19 creatures)
Replay Elementalist via bounce, returning Battle Hymn. (8 red, 1/6 bounce, 2 cards + Hymn)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (6 red, 6/6 bounce, 2 colored, 6 life)
Play Coiling Oracle, get Plains, tap it for white. (0 colored, 1 white, 20 creatures, 1 card + Hymn)
Play Battle Hymn (24 red, 1 card)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (38 red, 5/6 bounce)
4x Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (14 red, 1/6 bounce)
Replay Cloudshift via bounce, original targeting Coiling Oracle, copies targeting Bell-Ringer. (10 red, 0/6 bounce, copies on stack)
The 4 untaps by the Cloudshift copies will finish converting life to colored. Each untap also gives 6 bounces, for a total 24. We want to use those to generate active Teach by Example triggers. We can cast Revolutionist via madness at instant speed, to make use of bounces while more untap triggers are on the stack. But are limited in that we can only get 10 recasts "stored". Use the other 14 bounces for a mixture of creatures, card draw and red mana generation:
- 1x Battle Hymn (24 red)
- 3x Expedite (9 red, 23 creatures, 4 cards)
- 1x Battle Hymn (26 red)
- 4x Expedite (6 red, 27 creatures, 8 cards)
- 5x Battle Hymn (111 red)
- 3x Revolutionist, returning Teach (99 red, 3 Teach in hand)
- 1x bounce Revolutionist (3 Teach + 1 Revo in hand)
- 6x keep bouncers untapped (6/6 bounce)
The original Cloudshift flickers Oracle and puts Saprazzan Skerry into play.
We have 99 red, 26 creatures, 8 cards + 3 Teach + Revo playable, 5 colored, 1 life and 6 untapped bouncers. We enter the last start phase where we want to got through some stages. First generate some white:
Play Out Cold targeting Rapier, leave it on the stack. (96 red, 4 colored, 7 cards)
3x Play Teach by Example (90 red)
Replay Teach by Example via Revolutionist (84 red, 27 creatures)
5x Replay Teach by Example via bounce (54 red, 1/6 bounce)
Play Rewind, targeting Out Cold with all ten copies so they all resolve without fizzling. Get as much mana from Mountain, Plains and Skerry untaps as possible, saccing Skerry in the process.
We have 62 red, 10 white, 4 blue, 2 colored with 6 playable cards, 27 creatures and 1 of 6 bouncers untapped.
Use the bounce to get Cloudshift back to hand.
Reserve 1 colored to play Acolyte of Aclazotz, so we can gain more life from Bottle Golems later.
Play Disruptive Pitmage using one of the blue.
Play Library of Leng.
Spend 1 white to get 6 bounces. Use 1 on Expedite to give Pitmage haste. Use 1 to get Cloudshift back. Use 4 to get some Teach by Example ready.
Go through the white stage with 9 white and initial 4 copies. 6 bouncers are enough to do this and get a bunch of Teach by Examples active. Call it X.
Use the final colored to get a layer of Reclaim copies, producing X blue.
Go through the blue and white stage to produce a giant Bottle Golems, buffing it with Plow Through Raito. After sacrificing we gain f_{w2}(X) life, which we can use to get access to the rest of the stages.
With that start we hook into the opponents life 19 times, going through f_{w4} each time. Then we hook into spare cards 32 times, going through f_{w4+1} each time. So a fairly precise damage estimate would be f_{w4+1}^32(f_{w4}^19(f_{w2}(X))) which is bigger than f_{w4+2}(32).
Edit: We need to improve the start a bit to free up a deck slot for Gaze of Pain. The entire combo works at instant speed, so each Gaze trigger cam hit Grollub to give the opponent a scaling amount of life. So each Gaze copy before combat does the same work as a card exiled to Harvest Pyre. We'd get f_{w4+2}^2(#exiles)
Edit2: I guess each Mount Velus Manticore we play can give the oppoenent 2 life we can hook into before we start exiling stuff. Not as inspiring as Gaze, but still a reason to cut down the number of Ancestral Angers. We can't cast Gaze afterwards, but can still increase the number of triggers if we keep Akroan Crusader around until attacks happen (exile Gaze instead after cssting it to keep #exiles the same)
upkeep step (due to Aven Augur, the main computations and stage/hyperstage/megastage should happen here)
(is there no draw step here?)
untap step
upkeep step
...
untap step
upkeep step
2nd combat phase
3rd main phase
3rd combat phase
4th main phase
...
Then it looks like World at War is not very useful...
Or am I wrong? Because this page and this page use slightly different words about Sphinx of the Second Sun, saying "At the beginning of each of your postcombat main phases".
Q2: How does the stack looks like?
Subquestion: The top is the computation - Xathrid Necromancer triggers. Below that, is it a hyperstage transition?
Subquestion: Can Obeka, Splitter of Seconds work as replacement of Sphinx of the Second Sun? It insert upkeep steps between 1st combat phase and 2nd main phase (instead of "after 2nd main phase"), so we can grow before 2nd main phase ends for World at War.
The main problem is what I'm not clear about: how to prevent game ending early from damage?
Q7: After the megastage sweeper (i.e. Worldfire), how to build the environment up and turn the number remember by Thousand-Year Storm into amount of enchantments like TYS and Bloodbond March?
Q1:
In main phase 1, we first aim to cast as many copies of World at war as possible. We don't however have access to the full strength of the combo, since it's not an upkeep step for Aven Augur. But we do manage to get in 3 computations anyway; which we describe the process as split into five "sections" in which different resources are accessible.
Then, we pass through the combat phase, and then at the begining of our second main phase, each of the World at war copies we resovle will trigger, giving us a lot of combat phases followed by main phases.
Then, at the beginning of each subsequent main phase, (the oracle text clarifies "Each"), we can trigger a lot of Sphinx of the second sun triggers. Each one creates a beginning phase and thus an upkeep phase, during each of which we can do the full combo many times for each of the clues we get by something like Tamiyo's Journal copies.
After using up all the resourcres we have, during the last upkeep phase, we spend the last remaining stuff t make as many more copies of sphinx as possible; to trigger on the next main phase.
So in your listing, there's also a bunch more beginning phases after the second main phase etc.
Q2:
At the top of the stack during a computation, there will be necromacer triggers, and an arcbond trigger.
Below that, there's the recovery part of the hyperstage transition (ratadrabik triggers to remake legendaries, etc)
Below that, there's a Gravitic Punch to gain us a bunch of life from hitting the opponent with a lifelink creature, that scales life to the output of the computation, after which we can convert that into storm count by flashing back Lingering souls a bunch of timrd.
Below that is a megastage transition
Below that are a bunch of hyperstage transitions; in between each of which are a bunch of layers of Bloodbond march / Ashnod the uncaring triggers
Below that is another megastage transition, etc.
Q3: We ensure that every time a Kaervek's Spite is cast, there is a Chancellor of the annex n play on the opponent's side (or maybe Cephalid shrine), ready to counter it, so nobody loses any life. For gravitic punch, most of the times we cast it we don't actually need to resovle any of the copies (which we can ensure by having the original target removed; or by having the original targets be a lifelink cresature and us so that if it resolves it doesn't change any life totals). After a computation, we do use it to hit the opponent and gain a bunch of life, but the opponent will always have enough life to take it, since their life scales with the number of computation steps due to havign a lifelink creature with Arcbond active.
Q5: Yes, the volute triggers many times since we can have many copies of veyran; so we can case many spells and then spite.
Q6: For hyperstage transitions, each of the copies of Ratadrabik of urborg makes new copies of all of our legends that died (which can be scaled up to whatever resources we have before resolving the sweeper, including our storm count) - so the next time we sacrifice an Aven Augur, the number of Ashnod the uncaring triggers we get out of it scales.
To build up the environment, firstly before the hyperstage transition we can Wrong turn any artifacts we need to the opponent's side, as there's not another way to recover them if they die.
Then, after the sweeper, we have floating Aven augar triggers to bounce those artifacts back to our hand, and then Bloodbond March triggers to put creatures into play.
We don't recover Tyvar at this point, meaning we don't have access to haste. The thing that resticts us from doing is creating more colourless mana.
However, we can always ensure that, during the periods of time we *do* have access to tyvar (which are at the very top level megastage after the computation), we can make enough coourless mana then to scale to the computaton output and to have enough to rebuild any of the lower hyperstage or megastage transitions we resolve back down to.
Q7: To rebuild from a wordfire, first we ensure that each of our creatures including Riftsweeper and Chromescale drake are in our library before resolving worldfire.
After the worldfire resolves, we have a series of floating triggers set up prior; that first mills the creatures with Chromescale drake triggers, then returns them to pay with a Bloodbond march trigger, then a floating TYS trigger for Fated infatuation to make a enough of of riftsweeper and drake to mill / unexile / draw (for artifacts) whatever else we need. (that trigger actually needs to resovle after another hyperstage transition that first casts wrong turn to donate Chancellor of the annex to safely counter the upcoming spite, followed by more recovery of floating BBM triggers; but it does work out without losing resources).
Then, eventually we have a Thousand year storm put into play with an Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, and then the next time we cast a spell (Lingering souls as part of setting up the next hyperstage transition, storm count can translate to number of creatures/enchantments)
Q8: Brutal suppression is to cause creature abilities to have "sacrifice a land" as part of their cost, which means they can trigger Ashnod the uncaring, and thus get a bunch of copies from them. This is needed for the later stages for Master transmuter and Floodchaser.
Note that it can only give the sacrifce costs toc reatures that have a creature type, and thus not to Soul foundry, which would otherwise go infinite by making too many Aven augur copies.
Q9: The input to our first computation is a number described with several up arrows (i don't remember exactly how many, but it's one per layer).
If it's something like 2^^^^128, then we can set up a FWM program with the total sum of waterclock values being bounded by that amount.
The translation of TMs to FWM i think has 2 or 3 exponential factors (something like 2^2^2^X total waterclock values for an X state TM), but at this level that distinction is errilevant; it's basically a 2^^^^128 turing machine.
So in terms of the busy beaver function the lower bound there is just BB(2^^^^128); for which any computable function you could possibly write down in the universe is an extremely vast underestimate.
It seems that in the hyperstage recovery triggers group we don't have a way to recover Tyvar. Only megastage recovery triggers can. If that is the point, why there still could be many hyperstage transitions between two megastage transitions?
And another (seemly fatal) problem: What if the opponent can activate Aven Augur to interrupt computation? It doesn't require haste. (Oh... there is no "opponent's upkeep" in turn 1, so it is safe.)
A ruling question:
Let there be Ratadrabik of Urborg and Drivnod, Carnage Dominus.
If we copy Ratadrabik of Urborg, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering another Ratadrabik of Urborg 2 times. Resulting 2 nonlegendary copies.
If we copy Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering Ratadrabik of Urborg. Now the alive Drivnod modifies the trigger, but how about the dying Drivnod? Is it considered as "still on board, so it is still modifying" or "already in graveyard, not modifying"?
@hyp_cos: No, a dying trigger goes off when a creature is placed in the graveyard, so it is not considered on the battlefield when the dying trigger resolves.
At the top of the stack you've presented, Tyvar is in the library.
After resolving through the computation, the recovery, down to the gravitic punch triggers, then after that we can resolve a spellweaver helix trigger to cast Search for glory, fetching tyvar, and alowing access to haste and colourless mana at that point, which is needed to fully convert our life total into storm.
Then after resolving the worldfire, tyvar is exiled; and can be moved from there to the library. We don't use haste during the worldfire recovery, but resolve a few of the next lower Augur triggers (and possibly some exhausted hyperstage transitions), which needs a small amount of colourless mana (bounded by the amount of stuff we had before initially putting that megastage transition on the stack).
After rebuilding the megastage transition, we can build the next computation on top of that; during whichtyvar is in the library again.
Indeed; the opponent can never use an augur because it's never their upkeep.
The haste source needs to be pseudo haste like Tyvar (or Thousand year elixir, but that card's untap ability is too strong); not actual haste from Embelem of the warmind, since actual haste can cause creatures to deal combat damage to each other, starting an illegal computation.
So Obeka, Splitter of Seconds isn't usable (and neither is The Ninth Doctor, which would otherwise be an additional ending layer)
The previous decklist allowed for using actual haste by ensuring that there's exactly one combat damage step, and it's also the only way to deal a large amount of damage to the opponent at once (so if you start an illegal computation with it instead, you can go infinite but you've missed your oppotunity to convery that to damage).
I beleive that the dying drivnod isn't counted, but not 100% sure
A ruling question:
Let there be Ratadrabik of Urborg and Drivnod, Carnage Dominus.
If we copy Ratadrabik of Urborg, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering another Ratadrabik of Urborg 2 times. Resulting 2 nonlegendary copies.
If we copy Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering Ratadrabik of Urborg. Now the alive Drivnod modifies the trigger, but how about the dying Drivnod? Is it considered as "still on board, so it is still modifying" or "already in graveyard, not modifying"?
I think it does add a trigger. Here are the relevant rules:
603.10. Normally, objects that exist immediately after an event are checked to see if the event matched any trigger conditions, and continuous effects that exist at that time are used to determine what the trigger conditions are and what the objects involved in the event look like. However, some triggered abilities are exceptions to this rule; the game “looks back in time” to determine if those abilities trigger, using the existence of those abilities and the appearance of objects immediately prior to the event. The list of exceptions is as follows:
603.10a Some zone-change triggers look back in time. These are leaves-the-battlefield abilities, abilities that trigger when a card leaves a graveyard, and abilities that trigger when an object that all players can see is put into a hand or library.
Example: Two creatures are on the battlefield along with an artifact that has the ability “Whenever a creature dies, you gain 1 life.” Someone casts a spell that destroys all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments. The artifact’s ability triggers twice, even though the artifact goes to its owner’s graveyard at the same time as the creatures.
603.2d An ability may state that a triggered ability triggers additional times. In this case, rather than simply determining that such an ability has triggered, determine how many times it should trigger, then that ability triggers that many times. An effect that states that an ability triggers additional times doesn’t invoke itself repeatedly and doesn’t apply to other effects that affect how many times an ability triggers.
Death triggers look back in time (they fall into the category of leaves-the-battlefield abilities mentioned in 603.10), so they are based on the game state just before the death. By 603.2d, the number of additional triggers is evaluated together with the check for triggering, so it should also use the game state just before the death.
So the top computation should be followed by a megastage recovery. In another word, we need to have R at the top of our stage/hyperstage/megastage stack.
3. Consider the drawing card. It is Infectious Inquiry, limit use from poison counters. But why not use a card with limit use from opponent's deck (like Words of Wisdom)? It seems that the opponent cannot recover their library (Riftsweeper ETB triggers are always control by you).
7. It seems that Valgavoth's Lair goes infinite with Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, at main phase.
Tyvar untap Lair, which produces W, which uses Ruin Ghost to gain a lot R, and do many megastage transitions to grow, cycle Tyvar, and regain Lair by Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, then wait for next time the stack clear.
1. Correct, Drivnod and Precursor layers don't work together, hence the switch to Jolene.
Valgavoth's doesn't noticeably improve the combo when it is in full swing in our upkeep. But it does help with the start by getting two extra layers before the first computation when we cannot use Augur to bounce creatures.
2. I did consider Flash for the start and figured out some specific way it would go infinite. The problem was that it allows us to repeat hyperstage transitions without casting Kaervek's Spite, sacrificing Rector to Flash instead.
3. That's a good point. Might be a holdover we didn't reconsider after changing support cards around. I'll take a closer look.
4. For a while we had to use Chancellor because Shrine wasn't able to get back to the battlefield quick enough to counter the first Spite after a Worldpurge. With Anikthea in the deck that is not a problem anymore and we changed back to shrine because that's a bit cheaper to get for the start.
5. Elesh Norn would cause us to gain extra life from Pious Interdiction, going infinite.
6. Grazer still needs to put Archaeological Dig into play. Should probably be listed with the white stage after the change to Valgavoth's.
Edit: Err, regarding 3: reading Riftsweeper again, it does allow us to refill the opponents library. We can just target the cards the opponent exiled to Worldfire. So their card draw isn't limited.
Edit for 7: In a main phase we cannot just "do megastage transitions". Without being able to activate Aven Augur to bounce creatures the Worldpurges will end up exiling Riftsweeper and Chromescale Drake, with the only way to get them back being card draw. Which is of course strictly limited by poison counters. See #5149
Flashing an Academy Rector is cheap, but putting an Aura from graveyard to library is not. We need Worldfire to exile it (megastage transition) then Riftsweeper. Without Aura like Spellweaver Volute we are somehow very limited?
Also, how to take Pious Interdiction out of battlefield without the use of Kaervek's Spite?
EDIT: just bring back the creature it attach.
And about the Jolene, the Plunder Queen. Even if killing the Smoke Blessing attached creatures gets many triggers (one per Smoke Blessing), each trigger gets many Treasure tokens, we still cannot use the kill as +2 end layers.
Killing the Smoke Blessing attached creatures require Kaervek's Spite, then our actions are very limited because no flash or omniscience or other environment.
There is no improvement from just one of Golem/Drivnod/Jolene card.
Hmmm, starting with Flash would be pretty good, but it's not going to be easy. Flashing in Rector and Archon from a fake hyperstage transition below a Worldfire would bring back Pious and Volute. That's all the auras we need. Anikthea gets back other enchantments. So that would still go infinite. If we try to remove Archon we need some other way to reuse auras which turned out to be quite difficult back on page 204.
Pious Interdiction can go to the graveyard when we bounce whatever it is enchanting. If it is on a legend we can also create a copy and let the enchanted creature die.
Gandalf the White is interesting as it would potentially be a Drivnod, Carnage Dominus replacement as well, so we could remove Precursor Golem without losing a layer. I'm not sure what to do with an extra card slot, but it has to be good.
Gandalf would be able to be in play during a computation and give flash to our artifacts/legends. I don't think that is a problem?
Not copying Riftsweeper/Drake etbs might be tight, but seems doable.
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Edit: Also all the treasures generated by SSA die, so the second cast does essentially nothing before the computation anyway. It can only provide the triggers to scale after.
Now for some better news: When I suggested Valgavoth's Lair I failed to appreciate that it also allows us to get the layer from Precursor Golem triggers: Anikthea, Hand of Erebos can create a scaling amount of zombie lands. All of them get enchanted by SSA copies and then sacrificed to a Metalworker with Brutal Suppression
The other thing to be careful about is the fact that without a MotM in play, we can only have 1 panharmnicon, and thus only put 2 creatures under foundry.
But I think this is fine.
Riftsweeper is needed in all 5 sections; is drawn in sections I,II,III, and put under foundries in each
Drake is needed in all 5 sections; it is drawn in sections I,II,IV, and put under foundries in II and IV
Trickster is needed in 4 sections; it is drawn in sections I and III, and put under foundries in each
Necromancer is needed in 3 sections; it is drawn in sections II and III, and put under a foundry in section III.
Thus:
Section I's foundry has riftsweeper,trickster
Section II's foundry has riftsweeper,drake
Section III's foundry has riftsweeper,drake,trickster,necromancer
Section IV's foundry has drake
So this works with only getting 1 panharmonicon before needing to make the section II foundry.
Unrelated, I tried having a go at finding a stage combo in Pauper for fun. You're very limited on options for flash and copying, but there is Teach by example, and a few storm cards.
First, a black mana allows for casting Reaping the graves, returning 4 copies of Revolutionist.
They can be discarded to Putrid imp, to cast them and return a spell; 1 can return reaping and 3 for other spells. One can be Battle Hymn for cheap red to sustain the madness costs (which can be scaled with something like Goblin surprise) whenever needed. Revolutionist can then be sacced to Carrion feeder to be ready for the next reaping.
3 black mana then can then allow for returning 4 copies of Teach by example to hand, 2 other spells, and 3 revolutionists in hand ready to fetch back more; and thus allow for copying the next spell 7 times.
Then; can form a symmetric alternating copy stage, with a catalyst of green mana / white mana / life, 1-for-1 exchangable
S triggers: cast Sprouting vines, get many copies due to storm
C triggers: cast Cloudshift, get copies equal to the number of active Teach by examples, which can be made to be 7 by spending 3 black
Resolving S then Cs fetches a Plains, then flickers a Scaled Herblist to put it in for W.
It can then be recycled through Coastal Hornclaw and Epitaph Golem.
Checking we can get enough black mana and enough copies of cloudshift to sustain:
At the top level:
Have many S triggers on the stack.
Resolve 1 to fetch the Plains; then say we can cast C with N active Teach by examples.
The original can flicker a Revolutionist to return the original cloudshift to hand once it resolves, to avoid the need to counter it.
Thus have N-1 C's to do other stuff with.
Top one flickers Elves of deep shadow for black, after having cast a Prismatic strands earlier in the turn to not lose life. (alternatives like Bog witch or Basal sliver go infinite with reaping).
That black casts Reaping the graves for 3 Teach by examples.
The remaining N-2 C's flicker Revolutionists to return another Teach by example; ending up with N+1 teachs active after resolving down.
Then we resolve anther S and repeat, building up teaches for each S we had. Then extras can be used for more black or other flickers.
Thus, when building up the stage, we can always do that process to convert Ss to Cs starting from an initial 7 Cs; then use extra Cs to flicker Disruptive Pitmages to counter original Ss and Cs (and Revolutionists to return them). Extra Cs can then also be used to convert catalyst W 1-for-1 into life and then green through Mournful Zombie and Blightsoil Druid; and make extra black.
Then as for layers to fuel it; could have something like a blue mana casts Ghostly flicker to flicker the plains a lot through a lot of built up Teach by example copies, untapping a tapped island like Glacial Floodplain creates a lot of blue mana from High tide, and then you could get 12 such untaps through 4 copies of Civic Gardener + 4 copies of Initiate's Companion with double strike
Potentially there could be a second stage through something like Twiddle untapping Irrigation ditch, alternating with some blue card draw spell like Opt. But then I'm not sure how to generate initial blue to fuel the stage. I suppose even with a limited amount of blue, without a layer scaling it, like from Vault robber is still better than manual layers - as you'd get essentially layers equal to the number of expendable creatures.
Not sure how to get started or what turn is viable to get started on.
I feel like Lotus petals could help accelerate something out early (but not sure about turn 1 still), but would be incompatible with cheap card draw (in particular for the potential blue stage). More limited graveyard recursion like Glowspore shaman is an extra thing that needs to be flickered which seems to make us just slightly short of being able to scale cloudshift copies and teach by example copies enough.
1 Reaping the graves
2 Revolutionist
3 Revolutionist
4 Revolutionist
5 Revolutionist
6 Putrid Imp
7 Carrion Feeder
8 Teach by example
9 Teach by example
10 Teach by example
11 Teach by example
12 Battle Hymn
13 Goblin Surprise
14 Tuktuk Rubblefort
15 Epitaph Golem
16 Prismatic Strands
Green/White stage
17 Sprouting Vines
18 Cloudshift
19 Plains
20 Coastal Hornclaw
21 Scaled Herbalist
22 Elves of Deep Shadow
23 Disruptive Pitmage
24 Mournful Zombie
25 Blightsoil Druid
26 Twiddle
27 Opt
28 Irrigation Ditch
Extras
29 Vault robber
+ 31 cards to help get started / expendable creatures
Edit: Flickering Village bell ringer could untap multiple creatures at once, getting the black mana alognside the Scaled herblist untap, freeing up more flickers to be usable for Glowspore shaman, making using Lotus petals safe for startup.
Edit: Attempt at a turn 3 start
Turn 1: Tree of tales, Elves of deep shadow (need nonbasic green source)
Turn 2: Tree of tales, Elves of deep shadow x2
Turn 3: Hand: 4
Lead the stampede fetching and playing 5 0-mana creatures (Ornithopterx4, Kobolds of Kehr Keepx1) (hand:3, life:19, creatures:8)
Mountain, Battle Hymn (hand: 1, life: 18, red: 8, untappted elves avail)
Wren's Resolve (impulse: 2, red:6) (cheap impulse draw is safe; can't put lands into play from scaled herbalist)
Wren's Resolve (impulse: 3, red:4)
Battle hymn (impulse: 2, red:10)
Wren's Resolve (impulse: 3, red:8)
Molten Birth (impulse: 2, red:5, creatures:10), returns to hand, play again (impulse:2, red:2, creatures:12)
Battle Hymn, Wren's Resolve (impulse: 2, red:10)
(4th wren's resolve used)
Molten Birth x2 (red:4, creatures:14)
Battle Hymn (impulse: 1, red:16)
(4th battle hymn used)
Reckless Impulse (impulse: 2, red: 14)
Teach by example, Reckless impulse (impulse: 4, red: 10)
Ardent Elementalist returning Battle hymn (impulse:3, red: 6, creatures:15)
Molten Birth (red:3, creatures:17)
Battle hymn (red:18)
Ardent Elementalist returning Battle hymn (impulse:2, red:14, creatures:18)
Molten Birthx4 (red:2, creatures:26), Battle Hymn (red:26)
Ardent Elementalist returning Battle hymn (red:22), Molten Birthx6 (red:4, creatures:44), Battly Hymn (red:46)
Ardent Elementalist returning Wren's Resolve, cast it (impulse:2, red:40, creatures:45)
(4th elementalist used)
Ghitu Chronicler kicked x2 returning Teach by example, Wren's Resolve, cast them (impulse:4, red:26, creatures:47)
Plains, tap elves for black, Village Bellringer, Carion Feeder, (impulse:1, life:17, red:25, creatures:49, 3 untapped elves)
Additional cards added to deck so far: 2x extra Elves of deep shadow, 4xArdent Elementalist, 2xGhitu Chronicler, 3x extra Battle Hymn, 5xWren's Resolve/Reckless impulse, 5x 0-mana creature, 1x Lead the stampede, 2xTree of tales = 24
Reaping the graves (impulse:0, life:16, red:23, elves:2) returning 6 return-instant-or-sorcery creatures to hand (creatures:43)
Use 4 for mana, 2 for impulse draw:
- red:19 creatures:44 (return hymn) -> red:4 creatures:54 (moltenx5) -> red:56 creatures:54 (hymn)
- red:52 creatures:55 -> red:2 creatures:79 -> red:79 creatures:79
- red:75 creatures:80 -> red:3 creatures:94 -> red:95 creatures:94
- red:91 creatures:95 -> red:3 creatures:152 -> red:153 creatures:152
- red:139 creatures:154 (impulse draw costs (5+2)*2 mana)
draw: the 4 Revolutionists
Spend those 4 (6 mana each) to return Teach by example, 2 more impulse draw spells (drawing the other 3 Teach by examples + 1 more), and Reaping the graves
red:111 creatures:158 impulse:1
Cast Reaping the graves returning 10 spell-returners (red:109 life:15 elves:2)
Use 1 on mana, 2 on impulse draw (impulse:5), rest on Teach by example (teaches: 11)
From impulse draw: Tuktuk rubble fort, Relic robber[/s], exile random 0-drop creature for a treasure, Twiddle; copy 12 times and make 12 green/white mana; impulse:2
Glowspore shaman (impulse:1, G/W: 11) mills Prismatic strands, Coastal Hornclaw, Cloudshift
Prismatic turns off life cost for elves tapping bellringer, making a black freely
Reaping scales red mana, returns hornclaw, cloudshift, impulse draws other stuff
Teaches -> Cloudshift (G/W:10) -> more black, untap relic robber for more treasures
2 more treasures on Disruptive Pitmages and Coastal Hornclaw; G on Scaled Herbalist (G/W:9), and B on Putrid imp, Mournful Zombie, and Blightsoil Druid should now be enough to start the stage.
24 cards added to the deck: 13 were creatures
room for 8 more random creatures
3 treasures used for startup
-> 18 more blue available for running blue stage
~= F_{w+18}(F_w(24)) turn 3
(24 here is life + G/W; approx layers of first stage)
probably optimisable by replacing some of the duplicates of spells by extra return-a-spell creatures
Edit: Turn 2 start is probably possible
By turn 2, have played Tree of tales, Mountain, Elves of deep shadow, Lead the stampede
hand:4, creatures:6
Lotus petalx2, Battle Hymn, Glimpse the impossible (hand:0, red:3, impulse:3, creatures:6)
Battle Hymnx2 (red:11), Glimpse the impossible (red:8,impulse:3)
Molten birth (red:5,impulse:2,creatures:8), Battle Hymn (4th one) (red:11,impulse:1,creatures:8)
Wrenn's Resolve (red:9, impulse:2, creatures:8)
Ardent Elementalist for hymn (red:5 impulse:1 creatures:9), Molten birth (red:2 creatures:11), Battle hymn (red:11)
Wrenn's Resolve (red:9, impulse:2, creatures:11)
elementalist for hym -> birth -> hym (red:14 creatures:14)
can probably keep chaining impulse draw and returning hymn until ready to use 2 more Lotus petals for Carrion feeder + Reaping the graves (+Village bell ringer kinda free here), scale red some more, then can start using treasures for the other stuff.
Edit: Honestly, I'd be surprised if it isn't possible to start turn 1. It might require ignoring the creature preference and stacking red rituals, but it should be the goal. Cards like Chromatic Sphere can filter mana to colors we need while replacing themselves.
Oh, Rite of flame is legal; it surely must be then
Mountain, Rite of flame (red:2), Rite of flame (red:4), Rite of flame (red:7), Glimpse the impossible (red:4,hand:2,impulse:3)
Rite of flame (red:8), Desparate ritual splicing 2 Desparate rituals from hand (red:11), Glimpse the impossible (red:8, hand: 2 d.rits, impulse:3)
Chromatic star (red:6,green:1,hand:1 + 2 rits,impulse:2)
Desparate ritual from hand splicing the other (red:8), then the other rit (red:9)
Lead the stampede (red:7,creatures:5,impulse:2)
Battle hymn (red:12,impulse:1)
Glimpse the impossible (red:9,impulse:3)
Molten birthx2 (red:3,creatures:9,impulse:2), Battle hymn (red:10,impulse:1)
Glimpse the impossible (4th one) (red:7,impulse:3)
Molten birth (red:4,creatures:11), Teach by example,Battle hymn (red:22,creatures:11,impulse:1) (3rd hymn)
Ardent elementalist -> Glimpse the impossible (red:18,creatures:12,impulse:3)
from here should be possible to chain more recursion creatures into hymns to get everything going
filter with a star or petal into Twiddle for a Wizard's rockets activation at some point for remaining filtering needed
F_{w2+1}(X) where X = 3+num expendable creatures (for 3 other wizards rockets)
Start needed additional:
- Mountain
- Rite of flamex4
- Desparate ritualx3
- Glimpse the impossiblex4
- Lead the stampede (+5 0-mana creatures)
- Battle hymnx2 (in addition to 1 otherwise needed)
- Chromatic starx2
= 17
31 (initial extra) - 4 (wizard's rockets) - 17 = 20 expendable creatures
Prismatic strands -> Scourge of the undercity = +1 creature
- Clockwork Fox can get 53 x2 draws for the start without the blue cost
- Dross Scorpion can untap the first Wizard's Rockets without needing that additional filter artifact
- Feldon's Canes are worth 4 rockets each
I think we can clean up the W/G stage, removing the need for life, black, creature death and creature retrieval.
To remove life we use Flicker of Fate for the flicker spell. That lets us use 2 copies to move Lush Growth onto the untapped Plains, tap it for green, then move Lush Growth back onto a tapped land we wont sacrifice.
To reuse Revolutionist without black mana, and without it going through the graveyard we use Retraction Helix. During setup make sure that N creatures have gained that ability. We won't scale N, but a fixed, reasonably large number is good enough.
Now a flickering a Village Bell-Ringer gets us N bounces of Revolutionist, and thus we can increase the number of active Teach by Examples by N.
Resolving X copies of Flicker of Fate gets us NX active teaches, so resolving X copies of Sprouting Vines on top of that gets us N^X. When building the stage we skim a Bell-Ringer flicker of the top of the flicker-layers to make sure the next flicker-layer we put on the stack also has N copies. Like before we only start scaling that number when we return later.
Now life, black and creature death/recovery are free to build on top of the blue stage. Flickering Dusk Legion Zealot in response to a layer of Twiddle copies can turn our life into blue, so life can be used as input for the blue stage.
It looks like we can almost get a black stage with something along the lines of Reaping the Graves, Terror and Jewel-Eyed Cobra. But we don't have flash to replay the cobra and I can't make it work.
We can still get some extra layers though:
- A lifelinking Aerie Ouphes with power boosted by Bond Beetle can shoot at Aviation Pioneer thopters to gain X life. Conveniently persist brings back the Ouphes, losing lifelink in the process.
- Spending a black mana to cast Toxin Analysis gets X copies that can grant lifelink to the Ouphes
- Sacrificing Wizard's Rockets gets us X black mana. We can reuse the rockets by sacrificing Myr Retriever to Acolyte of Aclazotz. There's no other way the Myr can die yet as it doesn't fly, so Ouphes cannot shoot it down. We have to spend one of the black on Reaping the Graves to bring the Myr back. We can only play Rockets at sorcery speed, so before we can make any use of them the Acolyte ability has to resolve. This costs 1 of the opponents life.
- We can give the opponent X life by casting Harvest Pyre, with all the copies hitting a Grollub (that also doesn't fly.) Harvest Pyre could kill Myr directly, but that only makes sense for the original, because of the sorcery speed restriction on rockets. We can cast Harvest Pyre once for each spare card that isn't necessary to operate the combo.
Edit: Putting the deck together:
1 Teach by Example
2 Revolutionist
3 Battle Hymn
4 Putrid Imp
5 Disruptive Pitmage
6 Coastal Hornclaw
White/Green stage
7 Plains
8 Lush Growth
9 Flicker of Fate
10 Sprouting Vines
11 Scaled Herbalist
12 Glowspore Shaman
13 Village Bell-Ringer
14 Twiddle
15 Opt
16 Irrigation Ditch
Layers
17 Dusk Legion Zealot
18 Aerie Ouphes
19 Bond Beetle
20 Toxin Analysis
21 Wizard's Rockets
22 Myr Retriever
23 Reaping the Graves
24 Acolyte of Aclazotz
26 Grollub
Setup
27 Retraction Helix
28 Crimson Mage
29 Aviation Pioneer
30 Loran's Escape
The combo can stay fully functional after exiling the cards listed under Setup. All card types can be turned into Harvest Pyre fuel, so a start that gets the full 34 casts should be very doable.
So this stage even keeps life free for a potential layer. I have not figures out how to use that yet
Edit: Okay, plan for the layers:
- Play and use Wizard's Rockets to get X black mana.
--- Use Blur of Blades to kill Myr Retriever to get the rockets back, at the cost of 2 life.
--- The Myr is an artifact, so it dodges Terror and has no other way to die yet.
- Sacrifice Bottle Golems that have been buffed by Bond Beetle to gain X life.
--- The only useful way to do this is using Acolyte of Aclazotz, at the cost of 1 life of the opponent.
--- It's an artifact, so it dodges Terror. Killing it with Blur puts its power to 0, rendering the effect useless.
- Hit Grollub with a bunch of Harvest Pyre copies to give the opponent X life.
--- We can do that once per spare card.
There's a dangerous line were Acolyte can serve as an infinite layer of terrors for the black stage. But that keeps putting abilities on the stack that want to make the opponent lose 1 life each. So while we can get an arbitrary amount of those, and of creatures and everything else, we cannot clear the stack without putting the opponent to 0. I don't think there is a way to actually deal a big amount of damage with a dirty stack.
Updated Deck:
1 Teach by Example
2 Revolutionist
3 Battle Hymn
4 Putrid Imp
5 Disruptive Pitmage
6 Coastal Hornclaw
White/Green stage
7 Plains
8 Lush Growth
9 Flicker of Fate
10 Sprouting Vines
11 Scaled Herbalist
12 Glowspore Shaman
13 Village Bell-Ringer
14 Twiddle
15 Opt
16 Irrigation Ditch
Black stage
17 Feign Death
18 Terror
19 Jewel-Eyed Cobra
20 Byway Courier
Layers
21 Wizard's Rockets
22 Myr Retriever
23 Blur of Blades
25 Bond Beetle
26 Acolyte of Aclazotz
27 Harvest Pyre
28 Grollub
Setup
29 Retraction Helix
30 Crimson Mage
31 Molten Birth
1 Expedite
2 Retraction Helix
3 Molten Birth
Top Level
4 Teach by Example
5 Revolutionist
6 Battle Hymn
7 Putrid Imp
White stage
8 Plains
9 Plow Through Reito
10 Call to Glory
11 Scaled Herbalist
12 Disruptive Pitmage
13 Saprazzan Skerry
14 Rewind
15 Boomerang
16 Out Cold
Green Stage
17 Dueling Rapier
18 Reclaim
19 Turn to Dust
Black stage
20 Greedy Freebooter
21 Feign Death
22 Go for the Throat
23 Chainflail Centipede
24 Chainflail Centipede
25 Vesper Ghoul
26 Bottle Golems
27 Acolyte of Aclazotz
28 Grollub
29 Harvest Pyre
The top stage becomes non-green and loses the native storm. But I think we are still able to scale properly using just the number of active Teach by Examples. Always increase the layer you are refreshing to the scaling amount and create a fixed number of copies for all the layers on top of that, based on the number of Retraction Helixed creatures that are around.
The blue stage can only untap Saprazzan Skerry one time each time it is bounced. If it runs out of depletion counters it gets stuck in the graveyard. Out Cold provides infinite targets for Rewind.
The green stage produces blue with extra Reclaim copies: Move Skerry from graveyard to library, draw with an Out Cold clue, put in play and untap twice with Rewind - costs 3 blue to produce 4. Dueling Rapier is the only target for Turn to Dust here, so a layer of Turn to Dust copies can only destroy it once to add green. It then needs a layer of Reclaim before we can replay it (it has flash!)
The black stage produces green with extra Feign Death copies on Chainflail Centipede. A cast of Turn to Dust can then use up the Feigns on both Centipedes to turn 1 green into 2. Getting the Centipedes back without Feign would cost black to play them, so this is the only way to make use of them. Similarly the Freebooter could be replayed using Reclaim and draw. But it also costs a black, so nothing can be gained by doing this.
Wizard's Rockets now goes infinite because it can be reused with Reclaim. So we have to skip that layer and go from 1 life to 1 black mana directly with Vesper Ghoul. The Bottle Golems and Harvest Pyre layer still work.
Getting started becomes harder because Chromatic Sphere would go infinite. I believe it is still possible, but haven't worked out a line. Grotag Siege-Runner + Gleaming Barrier can turn life into colored mana without requiring a black to play Vesper Ghoul first. If that costs too much red for the start we can fall back on something like Halo Scarabs that is worse in the long run.
Edit: Huh, using Scaled Herbalist and an untap layer to put a land into play actually goes infinite:
- start with land and herbalist tapped, 2 white available
- use 1 white to get 2+ copies of Plow Through Reito. Resolve 1 to get plains to hand.
- use 1 white to get 2+ copies of Call to Glory. Resolve 1 to untap herbalist.
- tap herbalist, put plains into play, tap for white
- resolve Call and Plow to untap herbalist and return plains to hand
- tap herbalist, put plains into play, tap for white
We're back at the start and could have used extra copies to increase our numbers.
We can solve this by switching the untap layer back to flickering and using etb effects to put the plains into play.
Out: Call to Glory, Scaled Herbalist, Putrid Imp
In: Cloudshift, Coiling Oracle, Library of Leng, Earsplitting Rats, Village Bell-Ringer
Jack-o'-Lantern is another possible option for initial filtering; playing and cycling it is 1 more mana compared to Chromatic star which looks like the previous line still works
It would be nice to get something that doesn't need the exile.
1 Expedite
2 Retraction Helix
3 Akroan Crusader
Top Level
4 Teach by Example
5 Revolutionist
6 Battle Hymn
7 Earsplitting Rats
White stage
8 Plains
9 Plow Through Reito
10 Cloudshift
11 Coiling Oracle
12 Library of Leng
13 Village Bell-Ringer
14 Disruptive Pitmage
Blue stage
15 Saprazzan Skerry
16 Rewind
17 Boomerang
18 Out Cold
Green Stage
19 Dueling Rapier
20 Reclaim
21 Turn to Dust
22 Greedy Freebooter
23 Feign Death
24 Go for the Throat
25 Chainflail Centipede
26 Chainflail Centipede
Layers
27 Vesper Ghoul
28 Bottle Golems
29 Acolyte of Aclazotz
30 Grollub
31 Harvest Pyre
Start
32 Mountain
33 Rite of Flame
34 Rite of Flame
35 Rite of Flame
36 Rite of Flame
37 Crimson Wisps
38 Crimson Wisps
39 Crimson Wisps
40 Crimson Wisps
41 Ancestral Anger
32 Glimpse the Impossible
43 Ancestral Anger
44 Ancestral Anger
45 Ancestral Anger
47 Glimpse the Impossible
48 Expedite
49 Ardent Elementalist
50 Glimpse the Impossible
51 Might of the Meek
52 Teach by Example
53 Teach by Example
54 Battle Hymn
55 Glimpse the Impossible
56 Grotag Siege-Runner
57 Gleaming Barrier
58 Expedite
59 Vesper Ghoul
60 Expedite
Play Mountain, them 4x Rite of Flame for 11 red.
Play Akroan Crusader, then start targeting it with targeting draw spells to generate creature tokens:
Play 4x Crimson Wisps and Ancestral Anger, each replacing the last card in hand. We are at 5 red with 6 creatures.
Play Glimpse the Impossible to get back up to 3 playable cards. (2 red)
Play Battle Hymn to get back to 6 red. (6 red, 2 cards)
Play 3x Ancestral Anger and Expedite, each replacing itself. (2 red, 10 creatures)
Play Battle Hymn. (10 red)
Play Glimpse the Impossible. (7 red, 3 cards)
Play Expedite. (6 red, 11 creatures)
Play Ardent Elementalist, returning Battle Hymn, then play the Hymn. (12 red, 2 cards, 12 creatures)
Play Teach by Example, then Glimpse the Impossible, copying it. (7 red, 6 cards)
Play Might of the Meek, replacing itself. (6 red, 13 creatures)
Play Teach by Example, Teach by Example, then Battle Hymn, getting 2 copies.
We are at 39 red, with 13 creatures and 3 playable cards.
Play Revolutionist, returning Teach by Example.
Play the Teach by Example, followed by Glimpse the Impossible, getting a copy.
We are at 29 red, with 14 creatures and 7 playable cards. We are ready to transition into the second phase, where we use our life to reuse the instants and sorceries already in our graveyard. To do that we need some mana of colors other than red.
Play Grotag Siege-Runner and Gleaming Barrier, sac the Siege-Runner, to destroy Barrier, crack the treasure. (24 red, 5 cards, 1 colored, 18 life)
Play Vesper Ghoul, play Expedite giving it haste, tap it. (21 red, 4 cards, 1 colored, 17 life, 15 creatures)
Play Vesper Ghoul, play Expedite giving it haste, tap it. (18 red, 3 cards, 1 colored, 16 life, 16 creatures)
Play Village Bell-Ringer, retap the Ghouls. (16 red, 2 cards, 2 colored, 14 life, 17 creatures)
Retraction Helix, targeting crusader. (1 card, 1 colored, 18 creatures, 1/1 bounce)
We now have 1 hasty creature that can tap to bounce other creatures. We'll keep track of both the untapped bouncers and the total, since we will untap them regularly. To replay an instant/sorcery card out of our graveyard we can now spend a bounce on the Elementalist and play it for 4 red. This works at sorcery speed. We can also use the bounce to replay creatures. Once we have a discard outlet we can bounce Revolutionist instead of Elementalist to replay instants at instant speed.
Replay Elementalist via bounce, returning Helix. (12 red, 1 card + Helix, 0/1 bounce)
Play Cloudshift to flicker Bell-Ringer, retap Ghouls. (Only Helix in hand, 1/1 bounce, 2 colored, 12 life)
Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (6 red, 0/1 bounce)
Play Retraction Helix and get a copy to turn 2 hasty tokens into bouncers. (no cards, 2/3 bounce, 1 colored)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (18 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (16 red, 3/3 bounce, 2 colored, 10 life)
Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (10 red, 2/3 bounce)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (40 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (38 red, 3/3 bounce, 3 colored, 8 life)
2x Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (26 red, 1/3 bounce)
Replay Retraction Helix via bounce, getting 2 copies to gain 3 more hasty bouncers. (22 red, 3/6 bounce, 2 colored)
Replay Glimpse the Impossible via bounce. (15 red, 3 cards, 2/6 bounce)
Play Earsplitting Rats, no discard because the playable cards are actually exiled. (12 red, 2 cards, 1 colored, 19 creatures)
Replay Elementalist via bounce, returning Battle Hymn. (8 red, 1/6 bounce, 2 cards + Hymn)
Replay Village Bell-Ringer via bounce, retap Ghouls. (6 red, 6/6 bounce, 2 colored, 6 life)
Play Coiling Oracle, get Plains, tap it for white. (0 colored, 1 white, 20 creatures, 1 card + Hymn)
Play Battle Hymn (24 red, 1 card)
Replay Battle Hymn via bounce. (38 red, 5/6 bounce)
4x Replay Teach by Example via bounce. (14 red, 1/6 bounce)
Replay Cloudshift via bounce, original targeting Coiling Oracle, copies targeting Bell-Ringer. (10 red, 0/6 bounce, copies on stack)
The 4 untaps by the Cloudshift copies will finish converting life to colored. Each untap also gives 6 bounces, for a total 24. We want to use those to generate active Teach by Example triggers. We can cast Revolutionist via madness at instant speed, to make use of bounces while more untap triggers are on the stack. But are limited in that we can only get 10 recasts "stored". Use the other 14 bounces for a mixture of creatures, card draw and red mana generation:
- 1x Battle Hymn (24 red)
- 3x Expedite (9 red, 23 creatures, 4 cards)
- 1x Battle Hymn (26 red)
- 4x Expedite (6 red, 27 creatures, 8 cards)
- 5x Battle Hymn (111 red)
- 3x Revolutionist, returning Teach (99 red, 3 Teach in hand)
- 1x bounce Revolutionist (3 Teach + 1 Revo in hand)
- 6x keep bouncers untapped (6/6 bounce)
The original Cloudshift flickers Oracle and puts Saprazzan Skerry into play.
We have 99 red, 26 creatures, 8 cards + 3 Teach + Revo playable, 5 colored, 1 life and 6 untapped bouncers. We enter the last start phase where we want to got through some stages. First generate some white:
Play Out Cold targeting Rapier, leave it on the stack. (96 red, 4 colored, 7 cards)
3x Play Teach by Example (90 red)
Replay Teach by Example via Revolutionist (84 red, 27 creatures)
5x Replay Teach by Example via bounce (54 red, 1/6 bounce)
Play Rewind, targeting Out Cold with all ten copies so they all resolve without fizzling. Get as much mana from Mountain, Plains and Skerry untaps as possible, saccing Skerry in the process.
We have 62 red, 10 white, 4 blue, 2 colored with 6 playable cards, 27 creatures and 1 of 6 bouncers untapped.
Use the bounce to get Cloudshift back to hand.
Reserve 1 colored to play Acolyte of Aclazotz, so we can gain more life from Bottle Golems later.
Play Disruptive Pitmage using one of the blue.
Play Library of Leng.
Spend 1 white to get 6 bounces. Use 1 on Expedite to give Pitmage haste. Use 1 to get Cloudshift back. Use 4 to get some Teach by Example ready.
Go through the white stage with 9 white and initial 4 copies. 6 bouncers are enough to do this and get a bunch of Teach by Examples active. Call it X.
Use the final colored to get a layer of Reclaim copies, producing X blue.
Go through the blue and white stage to produce a giant Bottle Golems, buffing it with Plow Through Raito. After sacrificing we gain f_{w2}(X) life, which we can use to get access to the rest of the stages.
With that start we hook into the opponents life 19 times, going through f_{w4} each time. Then we hook into spare cards 32 times, going through f_{w4+1} each time. So a fairly precise damage estimate would be f_{w4+1}^32(f_{w4}^19(f_{w2}(X))) which is bigger than f_{w4+2}(32).
Edit: We need to improve the start a bit to free up a deck slot for Gaze of Pain. The entire combo works at instant speed, so each Gaze trigger cam hit Grollub to give the opponent a scaling amount of life. So each Gaze copy before combat does the same work as a card exiled to Harvest Pyre. We'd get f_{w4+2}^2(#exiles)
Edit2: I guess each Mount Velus Manticore we play can give the oppoenent 2 life we can hook into before we start exiling stuff. Not as inspiring as Gaze, but still a reason to cut down the number of Ancestral Angers. We can't cast Gaze afterwards, but can still increase the number of triggers if we keep Akroan Crusader around until attacks happen (exile Gaze instead after cssting it to keep #exiles the same)
Q1: Consider Sphinx of the Second Sun and World at War, the first turn should look like this:
- untap step
- upkeep step
- 1st main phase
- 1st combat phase
- 2nd main phase
- untap step
- upkeep step (due to Aven Augur, the main computations and stage/hyperstage/megastage should happen here)
- (is there no draw step here?)
- untap step
- upkeep step
- ...
- untap step
- upkeep step
- 2nd combat phase
- 3rd main phase
- 3rd combat phase
- 4th main phase
- ...
Then it looks like World at War is not very useful...Or am I wrong? Because this page and this page use slightly different words about Sphinx of the Second Sun, saying "At the beginning of each of your postcombat main phases".
Q2: How does the stack looks like?
Subquestion: The top is the computation - Xathrid Necromancer triggers. Below that, is it a hyperstage transition?
Q3: How to prevent the game ends early from damage of Kaervek's Spite and Gravitic Punch? Is it a Chancellor of the Annex under opponent's control? But how about Smoke Spirits' Aid damage?
Subquestion: Can Obeka, Splitter of Seconds work as replacement of Sphinx of the Second Sun? It insert upkeep steps between 1st combat phase and 2nd main phase (instead of "after 2nd main phase"), so we can grow before 2nd main phase ends for World at War.
The main problem is what I'm not clear about: how to prevent game ending early from damage?
Q4: What creatures should we apply Wrong Turn on?
Q5: What is the usage of Spellweaver Volute? Like... flashback Lingering Souls and use 2 triggers (due to the one Veyran, Voice of Duality) on Fated Infatuation and Kaervek's Spite (hyperstage sweeper)?
Then how to cast Artificial Evolution, Wrong Turn, Arcbond, ComeuppanceEDIT: Oh there is Ratadrabik of Urborg, turning legendary creatures into non-legendary so there could exist many.
Q6: After the Kaervek's Spite clean your things, how to build the environment up and turn the number remember by Thousand-Year Storm into amount of enchantments like TYS and Bloodbond March?
Creatures have Bloodbond March triggers, and enchantments have Anikthea, Hand of Erebos to use without actually put on battlefield. But Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler and artifacts won't revive.
Q7: After the megastage sweeper (i.e. Worldfire), how to build the environment up and turn the number remember by Thousand-Year Storm into amount of enchantments like TYS and Bloodbond March?
Q8: What is the usage of Brutal Suppression? We already sacrifice lands with Kaervek's Spite.
Q9: Any estimation (lower bounds) of the computation result? Like, first computation we do.
In main phase 1, we first aim to cast as many copies of World at war as possible. We don't however have access to the full strength of the combo, since it's not an upkeep step for Aven Augur. But we do manage to get in 3 computations anyway; which we describe the process as split into five "sections" in which different resources are accessible.
Then, we pass through the combat phase, and then at the begining of our second main phase, each of the World at war copies we resovle will trigger, giving us a lot of combat phases followed by main phases.
Then, at the beginning of each subsequent main phase, (the oracle text clarifies "Each"), we can trigger a lot of Sphinx of the second sun triggers. Each one creates a beginning phase and thus an upkeep phase, during each of which we can do the full combo many times for each of the clues we get by something like Tamiyo's Journal copies.
After using up all the resourcres we have, during the last upkeep phase, we spend the last remaining stuff t make as many more copies of sphinx as possible; to trigger on the next main phase.
So in your listing, there's also a bunch more beginning phases after the second main phase etc.
Q2:
At the top of the stack during a computation, there will be necromacer triggers, and an arcbond trigger.
Below that, there's the recovery part of the hyperstage transition (ratadrabik triggers to remake legendaries, etc)
Below that, there's a Gravitic Punch to gain us a bunch of life from hitting the opponent with a lifelink creature, that scales life to the output of the computation, after which we can convert that into storm count by flashing back Lingering souls a bunch of timrd.
Below that is a megastage transition
Below that are a bunch of hyperstage transitions; in between each of which are a bunch of layers of Bloodbond march / Ashnod the uncaring triggers
Below that is another megastage transition, etc.
Q3: We ensure that every time a Kaervek's Spite is cast, there is a Chancellor of the annex n play on the opponent's side (or maybe Cephalid shrine), ready to counter it, so nobody loses any life. For gravitic punch, most of the times we cast it we don't actually need to resovle any of the copies (which we can ensure by having the original target removed; or by having the original targets be a lifelink cresature and us so that if it resolves it doesn't change any life totals). After a computation, we do use it to hit the opponent and gain a bunch of life, but the opponent will always have enough life to take it, since their life scales with the number of computation steps due to havign a lifelink creature with Arcbond active.
Q4: Wrong turn is used on Chancellor of the annex (to counter spells when needed), Xathrid Necromancer + Coat of arms (or Sliver legion) + vanilla creatures + a lifelink creature (K'irrk, son of yawgmoth) to set up the computation, and on any artifacts we want to keep safe from the spite.
Q5: Yes, the volute triggers many times since we can have many copies of veyran; so we can case many spells and then spite.
Q6: For hyperstage transitions, each of the copies of Ratadrabik of urborg makes new copies of all of our legends that died (which can be scaled up to whatever resources we have before resolving the sweeper, including our storm count) - so the next time we sacrifice an Aven Augur, the number of Ashnod the uncaring triggers we get out of it scales.
To build up the environment, firstly before the hyperstage transition we can Wrong turn any artifacts we need to the opponent's side, as there's not another way to recover them if they die.
Then, after the sweeper, we have floating Aven augar triggers to bounce those artifacts back to our hand, and then Bloodbond March triggers to put creatures into play.
We don't recover Tyvar at this point, meaning we don't have access to haste. The thing that resticts us from doing is creating more colourless mana.
However, we can always ensure that, during the periods of time we *do* have access to tyvar (which are at the very top level megastage after the computation), we can make enough coourless mana then to scale to the computaton output and to have enough to rebuild any of the lower hyperstage or megastage transitions we resolve back down to.
Q7: To rebuild from a wordfire, first we ensure that each of our creatures including Riftsweeper and Chromescale drake are in our library before resolving worldfire.
After the worldfire resolves, we have a series of floating triggers set up prior; that first mills the creatures with Chromescale drake triggers, then returns them to pay with a Bloodbond march trigger, then a floating TYS trigger for Fated infatuation to make a enough of of riftsweeper and drake to mill / unexile / draw (for artifacts) whatever else we need. (that trigger actually needs to resovle after another hyperstage transition that first casts wrong turn to donate Chancellor of the annex to safely counter the upcoming spite, followed by more recovery of floating BBM triggers; but it does work out without losing resources).
Then, eventually we have a Thousand year storm put into play with an Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, and then the next time we cast a spell (Lingering souls as part of setting up the next hyperstage transition, storm count can translate to number of creatures/enchantments)
Q8: Brutal suppression is to cause creature abilities to have "sacrifice a land" as part of their cost, which means they can trigger Ashnod the uncaring, and thus get a bunch of copies from them. This is needed for the later stages for Master transmuter and Floodchaser.
Note that it can only give the sacrifce costs toc reatures that have a creature type, and thus not to Soul foundry, which would otherwise go infinite by making too many Aven augur copies.
Q9: The input to our first computation is a number described with several up arrows (i don't remember exactly how many, but it's one per layer).
If it's something like 2^^^^128, then we can set up a FWM program with the total sum of waterclock values being bounded by that amount.
The translation of TMs to FWM i think has 2 or 3 exponential factors (something like 2^2^2^X total waterclock values for an X state TM), but at this level that distinction is errilevant; it's basically a 2^^^^128 turing machine.
So in terms of the busy beaver function the lower bound there is just BB(2^^^^128); for which any computable function you could possibly write down in the universe is an extremely vast underestimate.
- top
- Xathrid Necromancer computation triggers
- Ratadrabik of Urborg recovery triggers
- Bloodbond March recovery triggers
- Aven Augur recovery abilities
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- ...
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute trigger @ Kaervek's Spite
- some hyperstage recovery triggers
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- ...
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute trigger @ Kaervek's Spite
- some hyperstage recovery triggers
- ......
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- ...
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute trigger @ Kaervek's Spite
- some hyperstage recovery triggers
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Gravitic Punch
- Spellweaver Helix trigger @ Worldfire
- some megastage recovery triggers
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- ...
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Bloodbond March triggers @ Aven Augur
- Ashnod the Uncaring triggers @ Aven Augur
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute trigger @ Kaervek's Spite
- some hyperstage recovery triggers
- ......
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute triggers @ Fated Infatuation
- Spellweaver Volute trigger @ Kaervek's Spite
- some hyperstage recovery triggers
- Thousand-Year Storm triggers @ Gravitic Punch
- Spellweaver Helix trigger @ Worldfire
- some megastage recovery triggers
- ......
- ......more megastages
So when can Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler be on board again?It seems that in the hyperstage recovery triggers group we don't have a way to recover Tyvar. Only megastage recovery triggers can. If that is the point, why there still could be many hyperstage transitions between two megastage transitions?
And another (seemly fatal) problem: What if the opponent can activate Aven Augur to interrupt computation? It doesn't require haste. (Oh... there is no "opponent's upkeep" in turn 1, so it is safe.)
Thirdly, consider the haste source. We don't want opponent have access to haste creatures. Then there is Emblem of the Warmind (this card should have been discussed previously). What's wrong with it if it can be recovered with Archon of Falling Stars in the hyperstage recovery? If no problem, can Obeka, Splitter of Seconds work as replacement of Sphinx of the Second Sun?
Let there be Ratadrabik of Urborg and Drivnod, Carnage Dominus.
If we copy Ratadrabik of Urborg, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering another Ratadrabik of Urborg 2 times. Resulting 2 nonlegendary copies.
If we copy Drivnod, Carnage Dominus, by legend rule, one of the two will die, triggering Ratadrabik of Urborg. Now the alive Drivnod modifies the trigger, but how about the dying Drivnod? Is it considered as "still on board, so it is still modifying" or "already in graveyard, not modifying"?
After resolving through the computation, the recovery, down to the gravitic punch triggers, then after that we can resolve a spellweaver helix trigger to cast Search for glory, fetching tyvar, and alowing access to haste and colourless mana at that point, which is needed to fully convert our life total into storm.
Then after resolving the worldfire, tyvar is exiled; and can be moved from there to the library. We don't use haste during the worldfire recovery, but resolve a few of the next lower Augur triggers (and possibly some exhausted hyperstage transitions), which needs a small amount of colourless mana (bounded by the amount of stuff we had before initially putting that megastage transition on the stack).
After rebuilding the megastage transition, we can build the next computation on top of that; during whichtyvar is in the library again.
Indeed; the opponent can never use an augur because it's never their upkeep.
The haste source needs to be pseudo haste like Tyvar (or Thousand year elixir, but that card's untap ability is too strong); not actual haste from Embelem of the warmind, since actual haste can cause creatures to deal combat damage to each other, starting an illegal computation.
So Obeka, Splitter of Seconds isn't usable (and neither is The Ninth Doctor, which would otherwise be an additional ending layer)
The previous decklist allowed for using actual haste by ensuring that there's exactly one combat damage step, and it's also the only way to deal a large amount of damage to the opponent at once (so if you start an illegal computation with it instead, you can go infinite but you've missed your oppotunity to convery that to damage).
I beleive that the dying drivnod isn't counted, but not 100% sure
I think it does add a trigger. Here are the relevant rules:
Death triggers look back in time (they fall into the category of leaves-the-battlefield abilities mentioned in 603.10), so they are based on the game state just before the death. By 603.2d, the number of additional triggers is evaluated together with the check for triggering, so it should also use the game state just before the death.
And some more comments to deck:
1. One treasure token means +0 end layers. One Smoke Blessing enchanted creature means +1 end layers. One Precursor Golem or Thousand-Year Storm trigger of Smoke Spirits' Aid still means +1 end layers. One play of Smoke Spirits' Aid means +2 end layers.
It turns out that even if we remove one of Precursor Golem or Drivnod, Carnage Dominus we can still have the same amount of end layers?
Valgavoth's Lair doesn't really improve. Smoke Blessing auras will be erase on Kaervek's Spite.
2. What's wrong with a cheaper Flash+Academy Rector as opening hand (to bring Omniscience)? The 2 cards will take the place of Epic Experiment+Resurgent Belief+Archon of Falling Stars. And we don't need Mana Crypt.
3. Consider the drawing card. It is Infectious Inquiry, limit use from poison counters. But why not use a card with limit use from opponent's deck (like Words of Wisdom)? It seems that the opponent cannot recover their library (Riftsweeper ETB triggers are always control by you).
4. Consider the counter card. It is Chancellor of the Annex. How about Cephalid Shrine?
5. Will Elesh norn, mother of machines be a better Panharmonicon?
6. What is the usage of Arboreal Grazer?
7. It seems that Valgavoth's Lair goes infinite with Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, at main phase.
Tyvar untap Lair, which produces W, which uses Ruin Ghost to gain a lot R, and do many megastage transitions to grow, cycle Tyvar, and regain Lair by Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, then wait for next time the stack clear.
1. Correct, Drivnod and Precursor layers don't work together, hence the switch to Jolene.
Valgavoth's doesn't noticeably improve the combo when it is in full swing in our upkeep. But it does help with the start by getting two extra layers before the first computation when we cannot use Augur to bounce creatures.
2. I did consider Flash for the start and figured out some specific way it would go infinite. The problem was that it allows us to repeat hyperstage transitions without casting Kaervek's Spite, sacrificing Rector to Flash instead.
3. That's a good point. Might be a holdover we didn't reconsider after changing support cards around. I'll take a closer look.
4. For a while we had to use Chancellor because Shrine wasn't able to get back to the battlefield quick enough to counter the first Spite after a Worldpurge. With Anikthea in the deck that is not a problem anymore and we changed back to shrine because that's a bit cheaper to get for the start.
5. Elesh Norn would cause us to gain extra life from Pious Interdiction, going infinite.
6. Grazer still needs to put Archaeological Dig into play. Should probably be listed with the white stage after the change to Valgavoth's.
Edit: Err, regarding 3: reading Riftsweeper again, it does allow us to refill the opponents library. We can just target the cards the opponent exiled to Worldfire. So their card draw isn't limited.
Edit for 7: In a main phase we cannot just "do megastage transitions". Without being able to activate Aven Augur to bounce creatures the Worldpurges will end up exiling Riftsweeper and Chromescale Drake, with the only way to get them back being card draw. Which is of course strictly limited by poison counters. See #5149
Also, how to take Pious Interdiction out of battlefield without the use of Kaervek's Spite?
EDIT: just bring back the creature it attach.
And about 5. Gandalf the White replacing Panharmonicon?
And about Vedalken Orrery as the flash source instead of High Fae Trickster? Orrery doesn't need to draw at opening.
And about the Jolene, the Plunder Queen. Even if killing the Smoke Blessing attached creatures gets many triggers (one per Smoke Blessing), each trigger gets many Treasure tokens, we still cannot use the kill as +2 end layers.
Killing the Smoke Blessing attached creatures require Kaervek's Spite, then our actions are very limited because no flash or omniscience or other environment.
There is no improvement from just one of Golem/Drivnod/Jolene card.
Pious Interdiction can go to the graveyard when we bounce whatever it is enchanting. If it is on a legend we can also create a copy and let the enchanted creature die.
Gandalf the White is interesting as it would potentially be a Drivnod, Carnage Dominus replacement as well, so we could remove Precursor Golem without losing a layer. I'm not sure what to do with an extra card slot, but it has to be good.
Gandalf would be able to be in play during a computation and give flash to our artifacts/legends. I don't think that is a problem?
Not copying Riftsweeper/Drake etbs might be tight, but seems doable.