Great work on the write-up so far. Although you are apparently tapping lands that are in the graveyard ^^'
A way to directly point out such minor sequencing mistakes or typos in the text would be nice.
I'm not sure if it's the most efficient way to go about Dual Nature, but easiest to describe and implement would be to transition from 'board with a lot of Dual Natures' to 'Board completely without Dual Natures'.
To go from Dual Natures to no Dual Natures do the following:
- Bounce the originals of everything you want to keep multiples off. I.e. Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March via Allay. let all the tokens be exiled.
- Replay all those things, but do not resolve their Dual NAture triggers yet.
- Bounce Dual Nature and let all copies get exiled.
- Resolve the Dual Nature triggerrs to get progresslevel amounts of all that stuff you wanted.
Then you go through the stages. So I guess usually you bounce or kill a Metallurgeon. Somewhat less often you bounce and kill it multiple times in a row and keep a pile of hasty tokens for a while. Rarely you venture up into the deeper parts of the combo.
At some point you want Dual Natures again so you can double their numbers:
- Play Dual Nature again.
It doesn't matter that the amount is not directly on progresslevel since the mana generation still is (it is dependant on Psychic Battle), so by doubling the Dual Natures it quickly catches back up.
I also would like a better way to point out small errors like that. "Well, I can't you that" should be "Well, I can't tell you that", the formatting went really weird during your example of rules 2 and 3 for ordinals, among others.
I also think it might be better to describe the magnitude of the numbers at the end, as was done with earlier versions of the article.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "adding a megastage will implement the function F3", it seems like something out of place or a typo.
Considering the reliance of this deck, and previous ones, on Cowardice, I wonder how different the best deck would be if the opponents' deck and card reveals were the worst possible for final damage numbers, just like the opponents' decisions. But I imagine this would take way too long to work through, and maybe even make the final damage numbers tiny due to something like Pact of Negation.
Hmm yes, it would be very useful if you guys could pinpoint exact places where errors or problems are. I don't know what the solution is though - I'm completely new to this web page thing.
@991woot119 I think the errors with rules 2 and 3 and "function F3" were from earlier versions of the article, I hope the page is updating correctly.
That's an interesting twist on the challenge! My first thought was, if the opponent has four Pacts of Negation, a Force of Will and a blue card, it's going to be very hard to get past the wall of five counterspells. I can't think of a deck that can cast six spells with the first five not doing anything. If we were to count life loss, at least four Chancellor of the Dross would deal 12 life loss - I don't know if the opponent can do anything about that. If we count damage only... maybe four Chancellor of the Forge for 4 damage? No, the opponent can have Intervention Pact. So four Pact of Negations and three Intervention Pacts, or some variation... I don't see how you bust through that.
Hmm, to get past 5 counterspells you'd want the last two cards to ideally provide access to the rest of the deck. So you'd want a mana source and a draw card. My first thought being cheap draw cards, possibly some with the drawback of discarding. Chancellor of the Annex stops their first counterspell, and acts as discard fodder for later. Chancellor of the Tangle is similar but for mana. Leyline of Lifeforce should also be kept in mind as a way of stopping creatures from being countered.
While that's the end of reveal from opening hand cards that seemed useful, there are lots of interesting cheap sources of draw. Bazaar of Baghdad can't be countered as its a land, and in combination with 3 reveal from hand cards, effectively gives us one more card to use in our opening hand. Disrupt is a free way of letting one of our spells go through, but is only effective on the last counterspell, any earlier and this could be countered too, not replacing itself. Brainstorm is like a more powerful Bazaar of Baghdad in this version of the challenge, but getting it to go off would be problematic, bazaar may end up being easier to work with. Winds of Change could also be amazing, after counterspells having the opponent draw 1 card.
That might be a bad direction after all, since only the fifth one cast would go off, and we need to produce mana for all of them. On cast effects happen even if the spell is countered, so what if there's a good on cast effect that we can reasonably cast? Well, 5 spirit guides/Chancellor of the Tangles + a land is the most mana we can do which our opponent can't stop. Cascade and storm are both useful, but I don't see storm being very useful without a cascade backing first.
Island, Simian Spirit Guide, 4x Chancellor of the Tangle, Etherium-Horn Sorcerer is the highest CMC cascade I could see us achieving. From there I think it's best to cascade into other cascades then into storm or a card which normally can't be cast (no mana cost suspend cards). I'll come back to this challenge a little later.
EDIT: Cascade looks like it won't end up dealing any damage, all the good storms are too high CMC, except for Grapeshot which gets stopped by Leyline of Sanctity. But there's still promising routes, Genesis Hydra + 6 Spirit guides/Chancellors can give us any nonland permanent with CMC 4 or less. Leyline of Lifeforce + 5 Spirit guides/Chancellors can let us cast any red or green creature with 5 or less CMC without it being countered. Replacing a spirit guide/chancellor with an Ancient Tomb can let us cast 6 or less CMC red/green creatures, and replacing that with Mishra's Workshop lets us cast 7 or less cmc artifact creatures.
The opponent would have Leyline of Anticipation. There's also no way they're not getting Omniscience when we're casting Show and Tell for our own. If we don't try Omnitell, they probably will. Not only would we have to plan the usual insane combo deck, but we'd have to build in a way to beat the best possible insane combo deck that has the goal of stopping the first one. I'm thinking that the opponent having Nivix Guildmage copy end the turn spells in response to almost everything will make many attempts have a Glorious End if anyone's insane enough to try.
Edit: Wait... Is the challenge pretty much done already? That was quick for something I expected to be impossibly complex.
What if the opponent uses Leyline for Black Lotus? That saves a card that they could use for another counterspell... I think the highest damage might be ZERO.
ReEdit: Oh, dealing damage with Chancellor of the Dross. I thought you used mana and burn spells. You can use Chancellor of the Annex instead of Force of Will and replace the Blue Card discarded to FoW with another Chancellor of the Dross. Unless we're missing something the limit is Nine 6... Missed basic math...
I wonder what the best possible is with an opponent that helps you is...
Hmm, that's a shame. Looks like Glorious End might make that challenge impossible to optimize beyond 12 life loss. The opponent can cast it with 3 spirit guides on our upkeep, with 3 pact of negations backing it up, requiring 4 counterspells to stop. That's pretty disappointing.
Looks like Leyline + Lotus + Glorious End + 4 pact of negations needs 5 counterspells to stop, so 4 pact of negations, 1 force of will, one blue card, and two chancellors, gives 6 as the most damage that can be dealt.
[EDIT] I just had a thought. We previously rejected Argivian Find and one Fountain of Youth, because we couldn't find a way to get back three life after the Worldfire resolved, so we were bleeding a life each stage. But, that was before we realized that we could use a Retract in the higher hyperstage to bring Fountain of Youth back to our hand.
So I think the hyperstage transition could go something like this:
So it looks like we don't actually have to bleed a life. The question is whether we can go infinite if we throw a Retract in there. But, as Iijil noted in the previous analysis, if we resolve Retract, whether before or after Battle Cry, prior to Argivian Find, then all the hasted Metallurgeon tokens will be destroyed, and we can't continue the combo when we go to the higher hyperstage. So this doesn't seem to be a problem.
What does seem to be a problem: When we go to lower stages in the lower hyperstage, if we set them up the same way, we will have an Argivian Find on the stack, and if we resolve it that gives us the ability to gain 2 life. But we need three life in order to recast Acorn Harvest. So we will bleed a life each stage again if we do it this way. So, how about the following: for all the stages below the top stage, we will put the triggers in the order Battle Cry, Argivian Find, and the Retract. We spend 3 life to cast Acorn Harvest, and gain 2 life back when we resolve Argivian Find, so we lose a net 1 life and add one Retract to the stack each time we go up a stage. For the topmost stage we do as described in the beginning.
I agree, we don't bleed a life, but I think the Argivian Find method goes infinite. By throwing in the Retract when transitioning. Yes that does destroy all tokens in the higher hyperstage, but you don't actually need them there. You just want to bounce the Fountain of Youth and get back to the lower hyperstage with that 1 extra life. There the extra life can be used to cast a Argivian Find+Battle Cry combo untapping the Mettallurgeon tokens from that stage. You use those tokens to actually make progress in normal stagey manner until they are about to run out and you need to "transition" again, except this time you untap even more tokens.
Hmm, the only possible solution I see is to change the foundation so that after we Retract all the metallurgeon tokens we can't implement the following Spellweaver Helix and Spellweaver Volute combos. Previously, we had accomplished this by switching to Dual Nature + Changeling Hero. But later we added Krosan Groundshaker so that we could save progress, and by keeping a store of mana, we should have no problem setting up our Spellweaver combos. I don't know how to save progress while also keeping the reliance on Metallurgeon tokens.
But, maybe we can switch in Watcher of the Roost. Previously, I had decided that we couldn't handle both Evacuation and Retract being triggered, because one would have to resolve before we went up to the higher stage/hyperstage. But, we can tap an untapped Metallurgeon token, imprinting it on Mimic Vat, then resolve Evacuation, then tap the Mimic Vat to create a Metallurgeon token. Is this enough to go up to the higher stage/hyperstage?
[EDIT] Hmm, I don't quite see how to make that work. If we pass to the higher stage with an untapped Metallurgeon token, we somehow need to generate an untapped token when we pass back down to the lower stage or bleed a token each time we refresh the higher stage, and Retract seems to prevent that. So we need to tap the last token before we pass to the higher stage. So we have a Mimic Vat imprinted with Metallurgeon, we resolve Evacuation, then we tap the Mimic Vat for a new Metallurgeon token. The problem is, the original Metallurgeon is now in exile, and there are no Bloodbond March triggers available until below the Retract breakpoint. So we won't be able to process the stage.
But by the same token, I think Iijil's earlier assessment that using Evacuation as our source of life gain goes infinite is incorrect. The idea is that we imprint a Metallurgeon on Mimic Vat in the higher stage, and then resolve Evacuation, passing down to the lower stage. We tap the Mimic Vat for a Metallurgeon token, supposedly gaining a token. But again, the original Metallurgeon will be in exile, and can't be brought back to the battlefield until we resolve a Bloodbond March trigger. This results in exactly one untapped token after we resolve the firstBloodbond March trigger, exactly the same as if we simply went down to the lower stage with Metallurgeon in our hand, played it, destroyed it with a Psychic Battle trigger (creating a token), and brought it back to the battlefield with the first Bloodbond March trigger.
So, I would like to explore the idea of using Evacuation as our life gain instant further. We could use the Gerrard's Verdict combo, but that has a problem with generating the needed colors. We need relatively cheap red mana, but there's no storage land of the proper kind that generates red and white mana, or red and blue. We can't allow cheap green or black mana. We can't use Heart of Ramos, since I believe it goes infinite; We can pull it back to our hand with Evacuation and replay it to get a lot of token copies. I think we can use two Mox Rubys along with Calciform Pools, but that results in a net gain of a card, not a savings. But I think there is still potential for saving cards using Evacuation as our life-gaining card.
Evacuation as lifegain definitely goes infinite. We are not supposed to have a token at the first Bloodbond March trigger. Only after the Psychic Battle+Bloodbond March combination should we have an untapped token with the original on the battlefield.
To go infinite, start with Metallurgeon in hand and a tapped token on the battlefield.
1. Cast Mettallurgeon. Put it on the Battlefield with a bunch of Bloodbond March trigger on the stack.
2. Cast Acorn Harvest to trigger the transition instants.
3. Resolve Battle Cry to untap the Mtallurgeon token. Tap it to destroy the original and put it on Mimic Vat.
4. Resolve the Evacuation to regain the life spent in step 2.
5. Tap the Mimic Vat to get an untapped token.
6. Resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return the original to the battlefield.
7. Tap the token to return the original to hand.
We are at the starting position. I omitted a bunch of enchantment bounces, mana regeneration etc, but it should be obvious that those can all be done more often than necessary with spare Psychic Battle triggers.
Start with Mad Auntie in hand and one untapped token on the battlefield.
1. Cast Mad Auntie. Get Bloodbond March trigger.
2. Tap the token to kill the Auntie. create a new untapped token via Mimic Vat.
3. Return the Auntie to the battlefield.
4. Return Auntie to hand via Familiar's Ruse.
I think I'm missing something about Bloodbond March. Don't the triggers for it go onto the stack on top of the creature you're casting? How do you get the creature onto the battlefield without letting all the Bloodbond March triggers leave the stack?
@Iijil: Oh, that was obvious. Do you agree that trying to cast Evacuation mid-stage, even with the fact that we can keep an imprinted Mimic Vat after its resolution, isn't going to work?
@991woot119: Good catch; that's what we have Cephalid Shrine for, so that we can counter a spell and put it in the graveyard immediately.
I knew there was something like that, but I thought a spell that got countered remained on the stack until it would resolve, but I looked at the rulings and it seems like I'm wrong.
Do you agree that trying to cast Evacuation mid-stage, even with the fact that we can keep an imprinted Mimic Vat after its resolution, isn't going to work?
Yes, I agree. We'd have no way to get the original out of the graveyard except by resolving a Bloodbond March trigger. But to get to one of those we'd need to resolve all of the transition instants, so we are back in the lower stage at that point.
Hmm, that looks like it would work. But it exchanges 2xFountain of Youth against Argivian Find+Glimmerpost, so no card save. It would also make March of the Machines go infinite via Dual Nature tokens of Fountain, so that one would be out. Then we get problems with Mirror of Fate. No version of exile retrieval seems to just work, so there would be more work required.
To fix that we could use Vedalken Orrery instead of Leyline of Anticipation. Then we would be unable to play the Metallurgeon in step 4. Getting a Dual Nature trigger to regain a token shouldn't be an issue during the normal comboing. Could we get a significantly better start if we have this easy access to artifact targeting?
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A way to directly point out such minor sequencing mistakes or typos in the text would be nice.
I'm not sure if it's the most efficient way to go about Dual Nature, but easiest to describe and implement would be to transition from 'board with a lot of Dual Natures' to 'Board completely without Dual Natures'.
To go from Dual Natures to no Dual Natures do the following:
- Bounce the originals of everything you want to keep multiples off. I.e. Psychic Battle and Bloodbond March via Allay. let all the tokens be exiled.
- Replay all those things, but do not resolve their Dual NAture triggers yet.
- Bounce Dual Nature and let all copies get exiled.
- Resolve the Dual Nature triggerrs to get progresslevel amounts of all that stuff you wanted.
Then you go through the stages. So I guess usually you bounce or kill a Metallurgeon. Somewhat less often you bounce and kill it multiple times in a row and keep a pile of hasty tokens for a while. Rarely you venture up into the deeper parts of the combo.
At some point you want Dual Natures again so you can double their numbers:
- Play Dual Nature again.
It doesn't matter that the amount is not directly on progresslevel since the mana generation still is (it is dependant on Psychic Battle), so by doubling the Dual Natures it quickly catches back up.
I also think it might be better to describe the magnitude of the numbers at the end, as was done with earlier versions of the article.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "adding a megastage will implement the function F3", it seems like something out of place or a typo.
Considering the reliance of this deck, and previous ones, on Cowardice, I wonder how different the best deck would be if the opponents' deck and card reveals were the worst possible for final damage numbers, just like the opponents' decisions. But I imagine this would take way too long to work through, and maybe even make the final damage numbers tiny due to something like Pact of Negation.
Hmm yes, it would be very useful if you guys could pinpoint exact places where errors or problems are. I don't know what the solution is though - I'm completely new to this web page thing.
@991woot119 I think the errors with rules 2 and 3 and "function F3" were from earlier versions of the article, I hope the page is updating correctly.
That's an interesting twist on the challenge! My first thought was, if the opponent has four Pacts of Negation, a Force of Will and a blue card, it's going to be very hard to get past the wall of five counterspells. I can't think of a deck that can cast six spells with the first five not doing anything. If we were to count life loss, at least four Chancellor of the Dross would deal 12 life loss - I don't know if the opponent can do anything about that. If we count damage only... maybe four Chancellor of the Forge for 4 damage? No, the opponent can have Intervention Pact. So four Pact of Negations and three Intervention Pacts, or some variation... I don't see how you bust through that.
While that's the end of reveal from opening hand cards that seemed useful, there are lots of interesting cheap sources of draw. Bazaar of Baghdad can't be countered as its a land, and in combination with 3 reveal from hand cards, effectively gives us one more card to use in our opening hand. Disrupt is a free way of letting one of our spells go through, but is only effective on the last counterspell, any earlier and this could be countered too, not replacing itself. Brainstorm is like a more powerful Bazaar of Baghdad in this version of the challenge, but getting it to go off would be problematic, bazaar may end up being easier to work with. Winds of Change could also be amazing, after counterspells having the opponent draw 1 card.
That might be a bad direction after all, since only the fifth one cast would go off, and we need to produce mana for all of them. On cast effects happen even if the spell is countered, so what if there's a good on cast effect that we can reasonably cast? Well, 5 spirit guides/Chancellor of the Tangles + a land is the most mana we can do which our opponent can't stop. Cascade and storm are both useful, but I don't see storm being very useful without a cascade backing first.
Island, Simian Spirit Guide, 4x Chancellor of the Tangle, Etherium-Horn Sorcerer is the highest CMC cascade I could see us achieving. From there I think it's best to cascade into other cascades then into storm or a card which normally can't be cast (no mana cost suspend cards). I'll come back to this challenge a little later.
Something else I tried: 4xSimian Spirit Guide, 2x Demigod of Revenge, and Bazaar of Baghdad drawing into two then discarding 3 copies of Demigod of Revenge is 1 source of uncounterable red/black mana that doesn't take a land drop away from dealing 15 damage. Sadly, the opponent can stop this by having Leyline of the Void in their opening hand.
EDIT: Cascade looks like it won't end up dealing any damage, all the good storms are too high CMC, except for Grapeshot which gets stopped by Leyline of Sanctity. But there's still promising routes, Genesis Hydra + 6 Spirit guides/Chancellors can give us any nonland permanent with CMC 4 or less. Leyline of Lifeforce + 5 Spirit guides/Chancellors can let us cast any red or green creature with 5 or less CMC without it being countered. Replacing a spirit guide/chancellor with an Ancient Tomb can let us cast 6 or less CMC red/green creatures, and replacing that with Mishra's Workshop lets us cast 7 or less cmc artifact creatures.
Edit: Wait... Is the challenge pretty much done already? That was quick for something I expected to be impossibly complex.
What if the opponent uses Leyline for Black Lotus? That saves a card that they could use for another counterspell...
I think the highest damage might be ZERO.ReEdit: Oh, dealing damage with Chancellor of the Dross. I thought you used mana and burn spells. You can use Chancellor of the Annex instead of Force of Will and replace the Blue Card discarded to FoW with another Chancellor of the Dross. Unless we're missing something the limit is
Nine6... Missed basic math...I wonder what the best possible is with an opponent that helps you is...
The
Necromancer (or Noob)
Cat.
Don't ask, I don't know why ether...
Looks like Leyline + Lotus + Glorious End + 4 pact of negations needs 5 counterspells to stop, so 4 pact of negations, 1 force of will, one blue card, and two chancellors, gives 6 as the most damage that can be dealt.
should be
"How to deal way too much damage in Magic: the Gathering"
[EDIT] I just had a thought. We previously rejected Argivian Find and one Fountain of Youth, because we couldn't find a way to get back three life after the Worldfire resolved, so we were bleeding a life each stage. But, that was before we realized that we could use a Retract in the higher hyperstage to bring Fountain of Youth back to our hand.
So I think the hyperstage transition could go something like this:
We are at 4 life and have a black mana. Cast Acorn Harvest, bringing us to one life, and get Spellweaver Volute triggers for both Battle Cry and Argivian Find. Resolve Battle Cry, and get lots of hasted untapped Metallurgeons. Put Argivian Find on the stack, but do not resolve it. Set up a stage with the Metallurgeon tokens, and use those tokens to transition to the higher hyperstage a bunch of times using Lingering Souls. When the Metallurgeon stage is exhausted, we are down to Argivian Find next on the stack. We make sure to bring back Fountain of Youth to our hand in the higher hyperstage, so we play it and gain a life. Then we play March of the Machines to put the Fountain of Youth in the graveyard, exile it with Mimic Vat, bounce March of the Machines, and use the created token to get another life. Then we resolve Argivian Find, bring Fountain of Youth back to our hand, play it, and use it to gain a third life. We then resolve some Psychic Battle triggers for Metallurgeon so that we can get some hasted tokens again, and then recast Acorn Harvest.
So it looks like we don't actually have to bleed a life. The question is whether we can go infinite if we throw a Retract in there. But, as Iijil noted in the previous analysis, if we resolve Retract, whether before or after Battle Cry, prior to Argivian Find, then all the hasted Metallurgeon tokens will be destroyed, and we can't continue the combo when we go to the higher hyperstage. So this doesn't seem to be a problem.
What does seem to be a problem: When we go to lower stages in the lower hyperstage, if we set them up the same way, we will have an Argivian Find on the stack, and if we resolve it that gives us the ability to gain 2 life. But we need three life in order to recast Acorn Harvest. So we will bleed a life each stage again if we do it this way. So, how about the following: for all the stages below the top stage, we will put the triggers in the order Battle Cry, Argivian Find, and the Retract. We spend 3 life to cast Acorn Harvest, and gain 2 life back when we resolve Argivian Find, so we lose a net 1 life and add one Retract to the stack each time we go up a stage. For the topmost stage we do as described in the beginning.
Does this make sense?
But, maybe we can switch in Watcher of the Roost. Previously, I had decided that we couldn't handle both Evacuation and Retract being triggered, because one would have to resolve before we went up to the higher stage/hyperstage. But, we can tap an untapped Metallurgeon token, imprinting it on Mimic Vat, then resolve Evacuation, then tap the Mimic Vat to create a Metallurgeon token. Is this enough to go up to the higher stage/hyperstage?
[EDIT] Hmm, I don't quite see how to make that work. If we pass to the higher stage with an untapped Metallurgeon token, we somehow need to generate an untapped token when we pass back down to the lower stage or bleed a token each time we refresh the higher stage, and Retract seems to prevent that. So we need to tap the last token before we pass to the higher stage. So we have a Mimic Vat imprinted with Metallurgeon, we resolve Evacuation, then we tap the Mimic Vat for a new Metallurgeon token. The problem is, the original Metallurgeon is now in exile, and there are no Bloodbond March triggers available until below the Retract breakpoint. So we won't be able to process the stage.
But by the same token, I think Iijil's earlier assessment that using Evacuation as our source of life gain goes infinite is incorrect. The idea is that we imprint a Metallurgeon on Mimic Vat in the higher stage, and then resolve Evacuation, passing down to the lower stage. We tap the Mimic Vat for a Metallurgeon token, supposedly gaining a token. But again, the original Metallurgeon will be in exile, and can't be brought back to the battlefield until we resolve a Bloodbond March trigger. This results in exactly one untapped token after we resolve the firstBloodbond March trigger, exactly the same as if we simply went down to the lower stage with Metallurgeon in our hand, played it, destroyed it with a Psychic Battle trigger (creating a token), and brought it back to the battlefield with the first Bloodbond March trigger.
So, I would like to explore the idea of using Evacuation as our life gain instant further. We could use the Gerrard's Verdict combo, but that has a problem with generating the needed colors. We need relatively cheap red mana, but there's no storage land of the proper kind that generates red and white mana, or red and blue. We can't allow cheap green or black mana. We can't use Heart of Ramos, since I believe it goes infinite; We can pull it back to our hand with Evacuation and replay it to get a lot of token copies. I think we can use two Mox Rubys along with Calciform Pools, but that results in a net gain of a card, not a savings. But I think there is still potential for saving cards using Evacuation as our life-gaining card.
To go infinite, start with Metallurgeon in hand and a tapped token on the battlefield.
1. Cast Mettallurgeon. Put it on the Battlefield with a bunch of Bloodbond March trigger on the stack.
2. Cast Acorn Harvest to trigger the transition instants.
3. Resolve Battle Cry to untap the Mtallurgeon token. Tap it to destroy the original and put it on Mimic Vat.
4. Resolve the Evacuation to regain the life spent in step 2.
5. Tap the Mimic Vat to get an untapped token.
6. Resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return the original to the battlefield.
7. Tap the token to return the original to hand.
We are at the starting position. I omitted a bunch of enchantment bounces, mana regeneration etc, but it should be obvious that those can all be done more often than necessary with spare Psychic Battle triggers.
New idea: What if we replace Evacuation with Familiar's Ruse? That way we can cast it mid-stage without messing up the battlefield. We use Familiar's Ruse to return Watcher of the Roost, then Retract can return a single Fountain of Youth. We will have to cast a bunch of Familiar's Ruses to return all our creatures to our hand before Worldfire, but that should be no problem.
1. Cast Mad Auntie. Get Bloodbond March trigger.
2. Tap the token to kill the Auntie. create a new untapped token via Mimic Vat.
3. Return the Auntie to the battlefield.
4. Return Auntie to hand via Familiar's Ruse.
So Familiar's Ruse goes infinite.
@991woot119: Good catch; that's what we have Cephalid Shrine for, so that we can counter a spell and put it in the graveyard immediately.
So the hyperstage transition goes like this: Say we have 4 life, and Fountain of Youth and Glimmerpost are on the battlefield tapped. Pay 3 life to cast Acorn Harvest, going down to 1 life. Order the Spellweaver Volute triggers Argivian Find, Battle Cry, and then Retract. Before Argivian Find resolves, use March of the Machines to destroy Fountain of Youth and get a token copy, which we tap to gain a life and go up to 2 life. We resolve Argivian Find, bring Fountain of Youth back to our hand. Play and destroy Fountain of Youth to gain 2 life, and go up to 4 life. Cast Flash of Defiance, going down to 1 life. Before Worldfire we bring Fountain of Youth back to our hand. After Worldfire resolves, we use Glimmerpost and Fountain of Youth to gain 1 life each, going up to 3 life. Then we resolve Retract, which allows us to replay Fountain of Youth and bring us back to 4 life. Our situation is now reset.
What if we replace March of the Machines with Karn, Silver Golem, and then replace Dual Nature and Allay with Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage? Then the biggest problem seems to be getting token copies of things. We can destroy Copy Enchantment with say Auratog, and Mirror of Fate with Metallurgeon, and make token copies with Mimic Vat. Then we can bring them back to our hand with Argivian Find. That would be a one card savings, although I may well have missed something.
1. We currently rely on Dual Nature to get Leyline of Anticipation and Omniscience tokens after Worldfire. We'd need another way to handle that, as populate only chooses what it copies on resolution.
2. We would need to create a new Mirror of Fate token after every Retract, but we only get one Argivian Find per transition and that already needs to return Fountain of Youth.
Another idea: Add Copy Artifact. We can then have one copy of Fountain of Youth, make another copy with Copy Artifact, and a third copy with Copy Enchantment. If we try to make more copies using Dual Nature and either Opalescence or March of the Machines, then the card will go the the graveyard, and it will be expensive to get it back.
Appetite for the Unnatural would go infinite:
Start with Metallurgeon in hand.
1. Cast Mettallurgeon. Put it on the battlefield with a bunch of Bloodbond March trigger on the stack.
2. Cast Acorn Harvest to trigger the transition instants.
3. Resolve the Retract to regain 1 life.
4. Replay the Metallurgeon and resolve Appetite for the Unnatural to destroy it and put it on Mimic Vat.
5. Tap the Mimic Vat to get an untapped token.
6. Resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return the original to the battlefield.
7. Tap the token to return the original to hand.
To fix that we could use Vedalken Orrery instead of Leyline of Anticipation. Then we would be unable to play the Metallurgeon in step 4. Getting a Dual Nature trigger to regain a token shouldn't be an issue during the normal comboing. Could we get a significantly better start if we have this easy access to artifact targeting?