[EDIT] I found another problem for the Ghosthelm Courier decks; running out of blue mana. Each activation of Ghosthelm Courier requires a blue mana, but I think we only get a blue mana from Stern Proctor every other activation. (The first time we can have Bloodbond March triggers below the Ghosthelm Courier activation, allowing us to bounce Stern Proctor back to our hand and discard it for Chrome Mox; but then the Stern Proctor is stuck on the battlefield, and we have to use a Ghosthelm Courier activation to bring it back to our hand without discarding it.) We can sacrifice a stage to bounce the Ghosthelm Couriers and discard them to Chrome Mox, getting us a net profit of N/2 blue mana, where N is the number of Ghosthelm Courier tokens. But that will only allow us to add N more Ghosthelm Courier tokens, which is not enough. So I think we need another blue Wizard to make things work.
I don't see a useful Wizard to add, so maybe add another Stern Proctor, and drop down to 14 layers.
[EDIT] I think the first deck has a problem as well. We need to use Wandering Mage's third activated ability to destroy Magma Sliver to restart the second hyperstage, but then we have to prevent damage to a player. I don't see a way to avoid it. If I understand correctly, activating "prevent 2 damage" N times will prevent the next 2N damage, no matter how that damage is divvied out. We can make put enough Backfires on Justice to overcome the damage shield, but to get all the layers, we need to resolve the rest of the combo after resolving a few Backfires, and that will prevent all the remaining Backfires. If we try to prevent the damage to ourselves instead, we will nullify the Spiteful Shadows triggers just below that are aimed at us.
The easiest fix seems to be to add Stifle, dropping this deck down to 14 layers + Finest Hour as well.
[EDIT]It may not be necessary, but here's another deck that reaches 14 layers + Finest Hour. This one uses Everglove Courier, which leads to a more efficient stage setup. But, we can't have the Spiteful Shadows / Guilty Conscience combo anymore. Replacing Guilty Conscience with Mangara's Equity saves the layer sequence to an extent, but we lose the Spiteful Shadows layers off of Justice. We can make up those layers with an extra three cards, which is what we saved, so it works out the same.
This has the same number of layers as the other three, but has the advantage of running with Reckless Assault, so that we can theoretically use some of our original 20 life to increase our numbers before the Finest Hours get triggered. It all comes down to whether we can get started, of course.
[EDIT] I found some better Wizards for the first three decks. For the Ghosthelm Courier decks, we can add Drowner Initiate as our third Wizard. This only fulfills half of Perpetual Timepiece's functions, but we can then replace Perpetual Timepiece with Put Away, which can only shuffle our own graveyard into the library, so we can then replace Yawgmoth's Bargain with Wheel of Fortune, and potentially draw 49 cards rather than just 20.
For the first deck, we can use Corpse Harvester or Ghoulcaller Gisa to sacrifice Magma Sliver at the cost of a tap and a black mana. I wondered for a while if Corpse Harvester could also be used to fetch the Swamp, but while it can fetch it at relatively little cost, it does require us to have a hasted Corpse Harvester token, so after each Obliterate we would have to spend a blue mana to get another one. Still, this allows us to get rid of Stifle and go back to the 15-layer setup.
Shoot - I've found the biggest problem to date; I believe the first hyperstage goes infinite. Say we have Mirror of Fate, Perpetual Timepiece, Tooth of Ramos, and everything else important on the battlefield (but not March of the Machines). We can play and tap Mox Ruby to get a red mana, and cast Bump in the Night with flashback, countering it with Cephalid Shrine. The casting triggers Spellweaver Volutes to cast Battle Cry and Retract. Resolve the Spellweaver Volute on Battle Cry first - this puts Battle Cry in exile and its Spellweaver Volute on Retract, and we use a token copies of Mirror of Fate and Perpetual Timepiece to put Battle Cry back in the graveyard. Then the Spellweaver Volute on Retract resolves, and we cast Retract, put the Spellweaver Volute on Battle Cry, and put Retract in exile. Use another copy of Mirror of Fate and Perpetual Timepiece to put Retract back in the graveyard. Tap and/or sacrifice token copies of Tooth of Ramos to get some mana and cast Allay, allowing us to bounce Copy Enchantment. Cast Copy Enchantment with multiple copies of Dual Nature on the battlefield, getting some extra enchantments including a Spellweaver Volute on Retract and more Dual Natures or Psychic Battles. Then resolve Retract, putting all the artifacts back in our hand. Play March of the Machines, and cast our artifacts again, getting multiple token copies. Then cast Allay again to bounce March of the Machines. (or we could have waited until this point to cast Allay) That looks like a loop, so we go infinite.
Hmm, we need to have some part of that combo dependent on actual artifact targeting. Potential replacements that I can see:
-Gold Myr instead of Tooth of Ramos. We now need artifact targeting to produce mana as just bouncing the creature doesn't give us any hasted copies. But I'm pretty sure this doesn't produce close tgo enough mana to keep our usual combo going.
-Millikin instead of Perpetual Timepiece. We now need the hasty artifact creature to put the Retract back into the graveyard. This costs us the colorless mana stage later. It also would not be good enough for the usual combo as creating those hasty millikin tokens would use the mill that it provides.
-Go back from Copy Enchantment + Allay to Changeling Hero + Assembly-Worker. That requires some more reverts, costing some cards and the ability to use auras in the layers. But now all that enchantment duplicating can only be done if we actually use a Metallurgeon trigger somewhere. I think the infinite combo can still be used to generate an arbitrary amount of white mana and non hasty artifact tokens. As long as we can't convert that into damage we would be fine.
Those are my first ideas. Only the last approach might actually work. There probably is a better solution out there.
Yeah, that seems like the most obvious approach. I don't really want to go back to Changeling Hero and allow an infinite mana combo, but I will go with it if it gives us the biggest numbers.
[EDIT] Another idea is to replace Retract with something less beneficial. I'd like to stick in an instant version of Shatterstorm, but the closest thing I could find was Fracturing Gust, which destroys enchantments as well (and eliminates life gain as a limiter). Losing enchantments is rough, but I think we can manage by collecting a lot of mana (Cast Tooth of Ramos with a lot of Dual Natures out, then tap and sacrifice the token copies) and using the mana to repeatedly cast Allay and rebuild our collection of enchantments. However, our old trick of playing and tapping a Mox before having Retract bring it back to our hand doesn't work anymore. We need to find something that can get destroyed by Fracturing Gust, and then brought back somehow. Perhaps an artifact land, fetched with something like Argivian Find?
Unfortunately, losing Spiritual Focus causes a loss of eight layers, leaving just eight.
[EDIT] Hmm, we also need to prevent Mox Ruby from getting destroyed easily any other way, so no March of the Machines or Karn, Silver Golem. So we need some way to recycle artifacts that can't recycle Metallurgeon too easily. I'm at a loss for ideas.
[EDIT] Going back to the first deck, we can replace Kiora's Dismissal with Drake Familiar, allowing us to remove one of the Spellweaver Volutes. For the best replacement card, I guess it depends on how fast it takes to get started; if we can get started with just a <= 17 life, then perhaps we can add Reckless Assault to spend some of our life before the first combat phase kicks in. If it takes more cards to get started, then perhaps switching out Perpetual Timepiece with something that can't allow the opponent to replenish his library (perhaps Hair-Strung Koto and Put Away), and then switching out Yawgmoth's Bargain with Wheel of Fortune, allowing us to draw more cards initially.
Hey folks! Would any of you be interested in writing an article on this combo on the wiki? I think it would make for a fun read, if someone is willing to actually write out in plain English how each layer of the combo functions.
Hello! I was actually planning to write up something, but I haven't found time yet, and I was waiting for the deck to stabilize. I didn't think about putting it on the MTGS Wiki, that sounds like a good idea.
Iijil: Can we determine for sure whether or not Insurrection goes infinite?
My thinking goes like this: If we resolve Insurrection prior to Obliterate, then there is no problem, since any benefits from Insurrection will be above the marker set by Obliterate. If we resolve Obliterate first, then Everglove Courier will be in our hand (or in the graveyard, which is no good), and all the token copies of Everglove Courier will be destroyed. If we resolve Insurrection without playing Everglove Courier, nothing happens. So we have to play Everglove Courier. It then gets haste from Insurrection; we can tap it to target itself. If we bounce it back to our hand, we will have accomplished nothing. If we destroy it, then we need a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield; we can't use the triggers we get from our most recent playing of Everglove Courier, since those resolve before Insurrection does. So I don't see an infinte here. Do you agree?
I'd say Insurrection goes infinite. If we play Everglove Courier after resolving Obliterate we also get some Dual Nature token copies. So after resolving Insurrection we can use the original to bounce itself and then have extra hasty tokens lying around.
But unfortunately, Drake Familiar gives you a second blue flying creature. I haven't found an alternative to Drake Familiar (Kiora's Dismissal requires an extra Spellweaver Volute), nor could a find a different stage sequence as efficient as this one.
[EDIT] I noticed another card that we could link Pain Magnification to besides Spiritual Focus - we could also use Waste Not to make the opponent draw cards. (provided we also have a card like Stunted Growth to refill the opponent's library) It's hard to connect to opponent draw though. We could use Horizon Chimera to give the opponent life, then maybe transition that into Devastate to deal damage to creatures; but Horizon Chimera eliminates Yawgmoth's Bargain, and Stunted Growth already eliminates Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar, so I'm not sure what we would use to draw the deck initially.
An idea is to use Nekusar, the Mindrazer coupled with Necromancer's Covenant and Mirror Gallery, so that our own life gets bumped when the opponent draws a card. But, that's too many cards. Ideally, we want a card that gives us life whenever the opponent draws a card, but I couldn't find a card like that.
[EDIT] So, the deck is looking close to where we want it to be, except we need to make sure that it can get started. The deck has to start with something like
Snow-Covered Island
Mox Emerald
Chrome Mox
World at War
Show and Tell
Omniscience
Yawgmoth's Bargain
and then Yawgmoth's Bargain allows us to draw 19 cards. Unfortunately, looking through the deck it looks like we need something like:
1 Opalescence
2 Dual Nature
3 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Ali from Cairo
5 Hunted Phantasm
6 Cultural Exchange
7 Night Dealings
8 Retract
9 Wandering Mage
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Psychic Battle
12 Cowardice
13 Bloodbond March
14 Cephalid Shrine
15 Mirror of Fate
16 March of the Machines
17 Metallurgeon
18 Mimic Vat
19 Riftsweeper
20 Tooth of Ramos
which is more cards than we can draw. Iijil, can you find any way to get started? In particular, what is the best way to generate black mana for Night Dealings? (We can probably switch around the stage sequence if it makes things more convenient.)
I can't find a way to get access to the whole deck with just the starting life. But it should be possible to grab some high layer stuff. With Five-Alarm Fire, Winding ConstrictorRepercussion, Justice, Pain Magnification and Spiritual Focus we get some layered lifegain/carddraw out of the first combat phase. That should then be enough to get going for real and cast World at War many times before the end of the second main phase. Sadly we don't get as much out of Finest Hour as we would like, but even just a few extra combat phases before we cast the World at Wars should be better than anything else short of a layer.
Unfortunately, I don't think we can just replace Wandering Mage by Ghosthelm Courier, since the latter has to tap, and I think that causes problems when we lose all hasted tokens via Obliterate. A possible fix is to have Breaking Through the Line, Goblin Kites, or Merfolk Seastalkers be the first additional stage. Merfolk Seastalkers has the problem of there being no efficient way to follow with a flying stage (Nectar Faerie has the same problem as Ghosthelm Courier.). We could go Crypt Sliver as the second hyperstage creature, but that leaves blue at the end, and I don't know of a good finisher (we just discovered that Wandering Mage is no good, and Walker of Secret Ways has ninjas which only come in blue or black.).
I think we can go with blue as the second color by using Streambed Aquitects as the second hyperstage creature, and using Grand Architect to target Metallurgeon when necessary. That leaves black at the end - unfortunately, Boneknitter is a 1/1; Black Poplar Shaman has enough toughness, but there are no red Treefolk.
Another possibility I'm thinking about is to get rid of Drake Familiar and go to the super-efficient Goblin Kites - Air Servant stage sequence. But, the only replacement I can see for Drake Familiar is Kiora's Dismissal - that takes care of the Spellweaver Volutes at the cost of an additional card, but I also want to be able to bounce Opalescence when necessary. Unfortunately, if we cast Kiora's Dismissal via Spellweaver Volute, we can't afford to use it for anything other than bouncing a Spellweaver Volute that would go to the graveyard otherwise. So we can't bounce Opalescence without spending a blue, and with this sequence that is too expensive to do for every Obliterate.
What exactly are you looking for from a Drake Familiar alternative? Stern Proctor bounces enchantments, but I'm worried about it bouncing artifacts. Triton Cavalry needs to be targeted with a spell, which looks like it gets us nowhere.
I'm looking for something that returns enchantments from the battlefield back to our hand, for a cheap enough price. (as an ETB effect, at the cost of generic or white mana, or for tapping or sacrificing an artifact or enchantment) Stern Proctor and Triton Cavalry don't work for the reasons you listed; we can't allow the bouncing of artifacts too cheaply, and targeting Triton Cavalry is too expensive.
Those are the only cards that contain "enchantment" and "hand" that haven't been explored already and actually bounce to hand. Could we make exiling work? That opens us up to Silverchase Fox.
Sadly, I don't think so; we can only move cards between the exile zone, library, and graveyard (except for very expensive effects like Disciple of Law).
What colour are the enchantments we're trying to bounce? There may be a card that bounces permanents of a certain colour, which would avoid targeting the artifacts we use.
Opalescence and Spellweaver Volute; white and blue. Bouncing white permanents needs to be more expensive than Metallurgeon; bouncing blue permanents needs to cost us a blue mana I think, or else we can generate blue mana on the cheap. But then renewing Spellweaver Volute will cost us a blue mana, which is too expensive. I don't see a way out at the moment.
So far I've found Sawtooth Loon and Silver Drake that bounce white and blue, but they're restricted to creatures, so we'd need two copies of Opalescence, they're also on ETB so they may be too cheap. I'll keep looking.
Wow, excellent work! All the ETB effects are too cheap for our current purpose, unfortunately. Snow Hound is also too cheap to bounce blue and green creatures, since Battle Cry will untap the Snow Hound. Escape Routes is an interesting card - something to keep in mind for later.
Interesting card! Currently, it doesn't fit into our deck. The way the stages work is that we have some resource (like a color of mana or a token of a particular creature) that we can spend to target a creature. That creature either is bounced due to Cowardice, so that we can then exile it to imprint it onto a Chrome Mox to get our mana back, or it gets destroyed due to Horobi, Death's Wail, in which case we can exile it to imprint it on Mimic Vat, and get our creature token back. The reason this doesn't go infinite is that to get our creature back from exile, we can move it to the library and then the graveyard cheaply, but then we must expend a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield. With this process we can create a complicated stack that winds up being worth X layers if we have X of the resource to start. But it is very important that we get back the same amount of resources that we spend; too little and we run out, too much and it goes infinite.
With Faces of the Past, destroying a creature will allow us to untap all the token copies of it that we have made via Mimic Vat, so the balance is destroyed.
Would killing off our enchantments then bringing them back work? Tragic Poet could then bring it back for tap and sac, Skull of Orm for 5 generic and a tap, Restoration Specialist can do it for {W} and a sacrifice, but it can bring back an artifact as well. Dowsing Shaman can do it for 2 generic, a green, and a tap, but I believe that's the wrong colour for the stage it's needed.
If that can't work, then we'd need to rethink the deck.
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[EDIT] I found another problem for the Ghosthelm Courier decks; running out of blue mana. Each activation of Ghosthelm Courier requires a blue mana, but I think we only get a blue mana from Stern Proctor every other activation. (The first time we can have Bloodbond March triggers below the Ghosthelm Courier activation, allowing us to bounce Stern Proctor back to our hand and discard it for Chrome Mox; but then the Stern Proctor is stuck on the battlefield, and we have to use a Ghosthelm Courier activation to bring it back to our hand without discarding it.) We can sacrifice a stage to bounce the Ghosthelm Couriers and discard them to Chrome Mox, getting us a net profit of N/2 blue mana, where N is the number of Ghosthelm Courier tokens. But that will only allow us to add N more Ghosthelm Courier tokens, which is not enough. So I think we need another blue Wizard to make things work.
I don't see a useful Wizard to add, so maybe add another Stern Proctor, and drop down to 14 layers.
[EDIT] I think the first deck has a problem as well. We need to use Wandering Mage's third activated ability to destroy Magma Sliver to restart the second hyperstage, but then we have to prevent damage to a player. I don't see a way to avoid it. If I understand correctly, activating "prevent 2 damage" N times will prevent the next 2N damage, no matter how that damage is divvied out. We can make put enough Backfires on Justice to overcome the damage shield, but to get all the layers, we need to resolve the rest of the combo after resolving a few Backfires, and that will prevent all the remaining Backfires. If we try to prevent the damage to ourselves instead, we will nullify the Spiteful Shadows triggers just below that are aimed at us.
The easiest fix seems to be to add Stifle, dropping this deck down to 14 layers + Finest Hour as well.
[EDIT]It may not be necessary, but here's another deck that reaches 14 layers + Finest Hour. This one uses Everglove Courier, which leads to a more efficient stage setup. But, we can't have the Spiteful Shadows / Guilty Conscience combo anymore. Replacing Guilty Conscience with Mangara's Equity saves the layer sequence to an extent, but we lose the Spiteful Shadows layers off of Justice. We can make up those layers with an extra three cards, which is what we saved, so it works out the same.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Chrome Mox
12 Copy Enchantment
13 Dual Nature
14 March of the Machines
15 Allay
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Mox Emerald
18 Metallurgeon
19 Chatter of the Squirrel
20 Battle Cry
21 Retract
22 Spellweaver Volute
24 Lingering Souls
25 Lingering Souls
26 Spellweaver Helix
27 Obliterate
28 Mobilize
29 Bayou
30 Wood Elves
31 Everglove Courier
32 Reclamation Sage
33 Goblin Kites
34 Black Knight
35 Air Servant
36 Snow-Covered Island
37 Jhessian Zombies
38 Rimescale Dragon
39 Aether Hub
40 Disciple of Law
41 Kozilek's Pathfinder
42 Night Dealings
43 Backfire
44 Spiteful Shadows
45 Justice
46 Mangara's Equity
47 Reckless Assault
48 Boon Reflection
49 Spiritual Focus
50 Pain Magnification
51 Five-Alarm Fire
52 World at War
54 Cultural Exchange
55 Simic Initiate
56 Soul Echo
57 Perpetual Timepiece
58 Show and Tell
59 Yawgmoth's Bargain
60 Finest Hour
This has the same number of layers as the other three, but has the advantage of running with Reckless Assault, so that we can theoretically use some of our original 20 life to increase our numbers before the Finest Hours get triggered. It all comes down to whether we can get started, of course.
[EDIT] I found some better Wizards for the first three decks. For the Ghosthelm Courier decks, we can add Drowner Initiate as our third Wizard. This only fulfills half of Perpetual Timepiece's functions, but we can then replace Perpetual Timepiece with Put Away, which can only shuffle our own graveyard into the library, so we can then replace Yawgmoth's Bargain with Wheel of Fortune, and potentially draw 49 cards rather than just 20.
For the first deck, we can use Corpse Harvester or Ghoulcaller Gisa to sacrifice Magma Sliver at the cost of a tap and a black mana. I wondered for a while if Corpse Harvester could also be used to fetch the Swamp, but while it can fetch it at relatively little cost, it does require us to have a hasted Corpse Harvester token, so after each Obliterate we would have to spend a blue mana to get another one. Still, this allows us to get rid of Stifle and go back to the 15-layer setup.
[EDIT] A better stage sequence:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Chrome Mox
12 Copy Enchantment
13 Dual Nature
14 March of the Machines
15 Allay
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Mox Ruby
18 Metallurgeon
19 Bump in the Night
20 Battle Cry
21 Retract
22 Spellweaver Volute
24 Lingering Souls
25 Lingering Souls
26 Spellweaver Helix
27 Obliterate
28 Mobilize
29 Swamp
30 Gem of Becoming
31 Walking Atlas
32 Magma Sliver
33 Goblin Replica
34 Prowling Pangolin
35 Krosan Groundshaker
36 Merfolk Seastalkers
37 Snow-Covered Plains
38 Eternal Dragon
39 Adarkar Windform
40 Aether Hub
41 Bloated Toad
42 Kozilek's Pathfinder
44 Backfire
45 Spiteful Shadows
46 Justice
47 Guilty Conscience
48 Reckless Assault
49 Boon Reflection
50 Spiritual Focus
51 Pain Magnification
52 Five-Alarm Fire
53 World at War
54 Hunted Troll
55 Cultural Exchange
56 Simic Initiate
57 Soul Echo
58 Perpetual Timepiece
59 Show and Tell
60 Yawgmoth's Bargain
Reaches F_{w^2*2 + w*4 + 16}(2).
Any ideas how to fix this?
-Gold Myr instead of Tooth of Ramos. We now need artifact targeting to produce mana as just bouncing the creature doesn't give us any hasted copies. But I'm pretty sure this doesn't produce close tgo enough mana to keep our usual combo going.
-Millikin instead of Perpetual Timepiece. We now need the hasty artifact creature to put the Retract back into the graveyard. This costs us the colorless mana stage later. It also would not be good enough for the usual combo as creating those hasty millikin tokens would use the mill that it provides.
-Go back from Copy Enchantment + Allay to Changeling Hero + Assembly-Worker. That requires some more reverts, costing some cards and the ability to use auras in the layers. But now all that enchantment duplicating can only be done if we actually use a Metallurgeon trigger somewhere. I think the infinite combo can still be used to generate an arbitrary amount of white mana and non hasty artifact tokens. As long as we can't convert that into damage we would be fine.
Those are my first ideas. Only the last approach might actually work. There probably is a better solution out there.
After some fiddling:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Riftsweeper
11 Chrome Mox
12 Dual Nature
13 Changeling Hero
14 Assembly-Worker
15 Karn, Silver Golem
16 Kiora's Dismissal
17 Tooth of Ramos
18 Mox Emerald
19 Metallurgeon
20 Chatter of the Squirrel
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Spellweaver Volute
27 Lingering Souls
28 Lingering Souls
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Obliterate
31 Mobilize
32 Savannah
33 Wood Elves
34 Everglove Courier
35 Sylvok Replica
36 Corpse Harvester
37 Wandering Mage
38 Break Through the Line
39 Snow-Covered Island
40 Shoreline Ranger
41 Rimescale Dragon
42 Aether Hub
43 Disciple of Law
44 Kozilek's Pathfinder
45 Night Dealings
46 Justice
47 Repercussion
48 Ion Storm
49 Archangel of Thune
50 Spiritual Focus
51 Pain Magnification
52 Five-Alarm Fire
53 World at War
55 Cultural Exchange
56 Ali From Cairo
57 Perpetual Timepiece
58 Show and Tell
59 Yawgmoth's Bargain
60 Finest Hour
Hopefully this gets us F_{w^2*2 + w*4 + 11}(3).\
[EDIT] Another idea is to replace Retract with something less beneficial. I'd like to stick in an instant version of Shatterstorm, but the closest thing I could find was Fracturing Gust, which destroys enchantments as well (and eliminates life gain as a limiter). Losing enchantments is rough, but I think we can manage by collecting a lot of mana (Cast Tooth of Ramos with a lot of Dual Natures out, then tap and sacrifice the token copies) and using the mana to repeatedly cast Allay and rebuild our collection of enchantments. However, our old trick of playing and tapping a Mox before having Retract bring it back to our hand doesn't work anymore. We need to find something that can get destroyed by Fracturing Gust, and then brought back somehow. Perhaps an artifact land, fetched with something like Argivian Find?
[EDIT] It looks like Salvaging Station makes Fracturing Gust work, and we can stick with Mox Ruby. We also need something to save Spellweaver Volute when all enchantments get destroyed, so perhaps add Kiora's Dismissal. So maybe something like:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Chrome Mox
12 Copy Enchantment
13 Dual Nature
14 March of the Machines
15 Allay
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Mox Ruby
18 Metallurgeon
19 Bump in the Night
20 Battle Cry
21 Fracturing Gust
22 Spellweaver Volute
23 Salvaging Station
24 Kiora's Dismissal
26 Lingering Souls
27 Lingering Souls
28 Spellweaver Helix
29 Obliterate
30 Mobilize
31 Swamp
32 Gem of Becoming
33 Walking Atlas
34 Magma Sliver
35 Goblin Replica
36 Prowling Pangolin
37 Krosan Groundshaker
38 Merfolk Seastalkers
39 Snow-Covered Plains
40 Eternal Dragon
41 Adarkar Windform
42 Aether Hub
43 Bloated Toad
44 Kozilek's Pathfinder
46 Backfire
47 Spiteful Shadows
48 Justice
49 Guilty Conscience
50 Five-Alarm Fire
51 World at War
52 Hunted Troll
53 Cultural Exchange
54 Simic Initiate
55 Soul Echo
56 Perpetual Timepiece
57 Show and Tell
58 Yawgmoth's Bargain
59 Finest Hour
Unfortunately, losing Spiritual Focus causes a loss of eight layers, leaving just eight.
[EDIT] Hmm, we also need to prevent Mox Ruby from getting destroyed easily any other way, so no March of the Machines or Karn, Silver Golem. So we need some way to recycle artifacts that can't recycle Metallurgeon too easily. I'm at a loss for ideas.
[EDIT] Going back to the first deck, we can replace Kiora's Dismissal with Drake Familiar, allowing us to remove one of the Spellweaver Volutes. For the best replacement card, I guess it depends on how fast it takes to get started; if we can get started with just a <= 17 life, then perhaps we can add Reckless Assault to spend some of our life before the first combat phase kicks in. If it takes more cards to get started, then perhaps switching out Perpetual Timepiece with something that can't allow the opponent to replenish his library (perhaps Hair-Strung Koto and Put Away), and then switching out Yawgmoth's Bargain with Wheel of Fortune, allowing us to draw more cards initially.
My thinking goes like this: If we resolve Insurrection prior to Obliterate, then there is no problem, since any benefits from Insurrection will be above the marker set by Obliterate. If we resolve Obliterate first, then Everglove Courier will be in our hand (or in the graveyard, which is no good), and all the token copies of Everglove Courier will be destroyed. If we resolve Insurrection without playing Everglove Courier, nothing happens. So we have to play Everglove Courier. It then gets haste from Insurrection; we can tap it to target itself. If we bounce it back to our hand, we will have accomplished nothing. If we destroy it, then we need a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back to the battlefield; we can't use the triggers we get from our most recent playing of Everglove Courier, since those resolve before Insurrection does. So I don't see an infinte here. Do you agree?
I thought I could save another card doing something like this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Riftsweeper
11 Chrome Mox
12 Dual Nature
13 Changeling Hero
14 Assembly-Worker
15 Karn, Silver Golem
16 Drake Familiar
17 Tooth of Ramos
18 Mox Jet
19 Metallurgeon
20 Lingering Souls
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Spellweaver Volute
26 Chatter of the Squirrel
27 Chatter of the Squirrel
28 Spellweaver Helix
29 Obliterate
30 Mobilize
31 Savannah
32 Wood Elves
33 Crypt Sliver
34 Sydri, Galvanic Genius
35 Goblin Kites
36 Air Servant
37 Snow-Covered Island
38 Jhessian Zombies
39 Rimescale Dragon
40 Aether Hub
41 Disciple of Law
42 Kozilek's Pathfinder
43 Night Dealings
44 Justice
45 Repercussion
46 Ion Storm
47 Archangel of Thune
48 Spiritual Focus
49 Pain Magnification
50 Five-Alarm Fire
51 World at War
53 Cultural Exchange
54 Ali From Cairo
55 Perpetual Timepiece
56 Show and Tell
57 Yawgmoth's Bargain
58 Finest Hour
But unfortunately, Drake Familiar gives you a second blue flying creature. I haven't found an alternative to Drake Familiar (Kiora's Dismissal requires an extra Spellweaver Volute), nor could a find a different stage sequence as efficient as this one.
[EDIT] I noticed another card that we could link Pain Magnification to besides Spiritual Focus - we could also use Waste Not to make the opponent draw cards. (provided we also have a card like Stunted Growth to refill the opponent's library) It's hard to connect to opponent draw though. We could use Horizon Chimera to give the opponent life, then maybe transition that into Devastate to deal damage to creatures; but Horizon Chimera eliminates Yawgmoth's Bargain, and Stunted Growth already eliminates Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar, so I'm not sure what we would use to draw the deck initially.
An idea is to use Nekusar, the Mindrazer coupled with Necromancer's Covenant and Mirror Gallery, so that our own life gets bumped when the opponent draws a card. But, that's too many cards. Ideally, we want a card that gives us life whenever the opponent draws a card, but I couldn't find a card like that.
[EDIT] Nice, I found a new card that adds a couple of layers: Winding Constrictor, which will boost both Night Dealings and Five-Alarm Fire. So here's what we would like to go with:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Dismiss Into Dream
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Riftsweeper
11 Chrome Mox
12 Dual Nature
13 Changeling Hero
14 Assembly-Worker
15 Karn, Silver Golem
16 Drake Familiar
17 Tooth of Ramos
18 Mox Emerald
19 Metallurgeon
20 Chatter of the Squirrel
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Spellweaver Volute
26 Lingering Souls
27 Lingering Souls
28 Spellweaver Helix
29 Obliterate
30 Mobilize
31 Savannah
32 Wood Elves
33 Everglove Courier
34 Sylvok Replica
35 Corpse Harvester
36 Wandering Mage
37 Break Through the Line
38 Snow-Covered Island
39 Shoreline Ranger
40 Rimescale Dragon
41 Aether Hub
42 Disciple of Law
43 Kozilek's Pathfinder
44 Night Dealings
45 Justice
46 Repercussion
47 Ion Storm
48 Archangel of Thune
49 Spiritual Focus
50 Pain Magnification
51 Five-Alarm Fire
52 World at War
54 Cultural Exchange
55 Ali From Cairo
56 Winding Constrictor
57 Perpetual Timepiece
58 Show and Tell
59 Yawgmoth's Bargain
60 Finest Hour
[EDIT] So, the deck is looking close to where we want it to be, except we need to make sure that it can get started. The deck has to start with something like
Snow-Covered Island
Mox Emerald
Chrome Mox
World at War
Show and Tell
Omniscience
Yawgmoth's Bargain
and then Yawgmoth's Bargain allows us to draw 19 cards. Unfortunately, looking through the deck it looks like we need something like:
1 Opalescence
2 Dual Nature
3 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Ali from Cairo
5 Hunted Phantasm
6 Cultural Exchange
7 Night Dealings
8 Retract
9 Wandering Mage
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Psychic Battle
12 Cowardice
13 Bloodbond March
14 Cephalid Shrine
15 Mirror of Fate
16 March of the Machines
17 Metallurgeon
18 Mimic Vat
19 Riftsweeper
20 Tooth of Ramos
which is more cards than we can draw. Iijil, can you find any way to get started? In particular, what is the best way to generate black mana for Night Dealings? (We can probably switch around the stage sequence if it makes things more convenient.)
Other than that, there seems to be a problem in the stages: Wandering Mage can hit Disciple of Law.
Unfortunately, I don't think we can just replace Wandering Mage by Ghosthelm Courier, since the latter has to tap, and I think that causes problems when we lose all hasted tokens via Obliterate. A possible fix is to have Breaking Through the Line, Goblin Kites, or Merfolk Seastalkers be the first additional stage. Merfolk Seastalkers has the problem of there being no efficient way to follow with a flying stage (Nectar Faerie has the same problem as Ghosthelm Courier.). We could go Crypt Sliver as the second hyperstage creature, but that leaves blue at the end, and I don't know of a good finisher (we just discovered that Wandering Mage is no good, and Walker of Secret Ways has ninjas which only come in blue or black.).
I think we can go with blue as the second color by using Streambed Aquitects as the second hyperstage creature, and using Grand Architect to target Metallurgeon when necessary. That leaves black at the end - unfortunately, Boneknitter is a 1/1; Black Poplar Shaman has enough toughness, but there are no red Treefolk.
Another possibility I'm thinking about is to get rid of Drake Familiar and go to the super-efficient Goblin Kites - Air Servant stage sequence. But, the only replacement I can see for Drake Familiar is Kiora's Dismissal - that takes care of the Spellweaver Volutes at the cost of an additional card, but I also want to be able to bounce Opalescence when necessary. Unfortunately, if we cast Kiora's Dismissal via Spellweaver Volute, we can't afford to use it for anything other than bouncing a Spellweaver Volute that would go to the graveyard otherwise. So we can't bounce Opalescence without spending a blue, and with this sequence that is too expensive to do for every Obliterate.
Anyone see any other alternatives to Drake Familiar?
EDIT: What colour are the enchantments we're trying to bounce? There might be a card that bounces based on colour.
EDIT:
Full list for future use, unless stated otherwise they only bounce creatures:
Escape Routes - White/black, for 2{U}
Fleetfoot Panther - Green/white, for ETB
Steel Leaf Paladin - Green/white, for ETB
Horned Kavu - Red/green, for ETB
Shivan Wurm - Red/green, for ETB
Sparkcaster - Red/green, for ETB
Lava Zombie - Black/red, for ETB
Razing Snidd - Black/red, for ETB
Marsh Crocodile - Blue/black, for ETB
Natural Emergence - Red/green enchantment, for ETB
Sawtooth Loon - White/blue, for ETB
Silver Drake - White/blue, for ETB
Snow Hound - Blue/green, for 1 generic, tap, and self-bounce
Razorfin Abolisher and Dissipation Field also have requirements, but they're much harder to manage. Maybe they'll prove useful in a later deck?
With Faces of the Past, destroying a creature will allow us to untap all the token copies of it that we have made via Mimic Vat, so the balance is destroyed.
If that can't work, then we'd need to rethink the deck.