I guess neither Cursebreak nor Appetite for the Unnatural lead to a significantly better start. I'm not seeing how we can improve the eight cards drawn by the first Words of Wisdom, other than to replace Allay by the new instant, so we will draw the same number of cards for the second Words of Wisdom. After that point, any improvement is not going to affect the final estimate. But, I suppose that Cursebreak is a minute improvement, with the most noticeable difference being that we can mill two more cards rather than draw them. As for replacing Cursebreak with Appetite for the Unnatural, the potential improvement would be targeting an artifact during the stage process. But, if we destroy Metallurgeon at that point, it won't be on the battlefield when we process the stage, so that's no good. Bouncing Metallurgeon at that point doesn't seem to help either. Otherwise, we can just destroy Core Prowler, but that is not as good as simply bouncing Copy Enchantment. So I guess we stick with Cursebreak.
[EDIT] No wait, destroying Core Prowler is better, since we can destroy a whole bunch of them to cast Allay many times. The question is if this outweighs having to bounce and replay Vedalken Orrery before each new stage. I believe the answer is yes.
[EDIT] I think using Vedalken Orrery causes problems. We can't bounce it if there are still abilities on the stack and we still need to cast non-instants, unless we have a Vedalken Orrery token. But we can only get a token by playing Orrery or destroying it and imprinting it on a Mimic Vat. If we need to buffer against a Retract or Worldfire, then we need to have an Orrery token in play, then we can bounce the original Orrery, and replay it before the current token gets destroyed. But eventually the Dual Nature destruction trigger gets resolved, and we lose all our Orrery tokens, so we can't repeat the same trick.
But can we get Vedalken Orrery to work?
Assume we always have a token Orrery in play and the original in hand. before Retract or Worldfire we can then play the Orrery, respond to the Dual Nature token creation triggers with a Metallurgeon bounce on the Orrery. Then resolve all Dual Nature token destruction triggers, followed by one token creation trigger. Leave the rest of the token creations on the stack for after the transition resolves. So that would work.
We'd need to setup the token on the battlefield original in hand situation at the start. I suspect we need to use Mimic Vat there and redraw the Orrery once to avoid having to resolve the entire stack of draw triggers. So half a Sphinx trigger that could otherwise be used on something stronger. That little cost alone might make it not worth it.
Nice, so it looks like we can even keep the same eight card first draw with Words of Wisdom, and then destroy Vedalken Orrery once we have a Mimic Vat in place. The question is whether the benefit of targeting Core Prowler with Appetite for the Unnatural outweighs having to use another card draw to redraw Vedalken Orrery. I suspect that the extra card draw is the most significant.
[EDIT] Crazy idea: can we get rid of Allay? Without Allay, the topmost stage does nothing, but we don't necessarily need it to. We can have the enchantment bouncing come from Cursebreak, and we can throw Evacuation in there as well, since we don't need to go up to a higher stage. All the Psychic Battle triggers from Metallurgeon can serve to replay Acorn Harvest. We still need some mana generation, so we keep Core Prowler and Saltcrusted Steppe.
But no, we need some way to rebuild our progress after Worldfire, and Allay seems like the easiest way to do that. If there was a way to spend mana to return an enchantment (including Spellweaver Volute), that would be nice.
Sadly, we cannot be able to return a creature to our hand while leaving its token copies intact, or else we can do as Iijil described here. Drawing cards is too good as well.
But, we can play Leonin Relic-Warder in the lower hyperstage, gaining life, and then pass to the higher hyperstage and cast Whelming Wave, bringing it back to our hand. So that's a problem...
Found an improvement: We can replace Flash of Defiance with a flashback spell that doesn't require life, and replace Volcanic Island with a painland. This will allow us to jettison Radiant Fountain. I don't see an obvious way to extend to four layers with Words of Wisdom, but we can switch to World of War at the top.
Being able to use a more normal flashback spell frees up the colors somewhat; we can have any combination of two colors from red, green, blue, black available for the latter stages, except for red and green. This may make it possible to reduce the cards needed for 12 stages, or maybe add a 13th stage.
I don't see anything going wrong with them. Although it has been a while since I've looked at the combo, so it is not fresh in my mind and I might be forgetting something. Still, lets assume it works.
EDIT: Of course 2 minutes after posting I notice a problem: Indomitable Creativity only gets one layer from Precursor Golem. Everytime we resolve a precursor trigger we get X copies. All of them get put on the stack at the same time and then trigger the Psychic Battles. So by the time we resolve the first copy, all of them already have their final target. That target then gets removed from the battlefield when we go through the hyperstage via Black Lotus from the first copy. So the rest of the copies do nothing and the layer doesn't work.
This is similarly to how Kithkin Mourncaller doesn't give us an extra layer, since all the extra attacking Kithkins will get removed when we combo via the draws from the first death. But I think you accounted for that one in the layer count, correct?
EDIT: Dangit, Dralnu's Crusade can pump up the Goblins too much, so that they can be targeted by Godtoucher. I feel like there should be a 13th stage somewhere though, especially now that we can use red mana just about anywhere.
Another idea would be to try to put at least three stages before Godtoucher. We can do Minotaurs/Merfolk and Goblins/Thrulls, but I don't see how to combine the two; both Thrulls and Merfolk seem to need to transition from Godtoucher, and I don't know how to produce blue mana with Goblins without also producing black mana. We could go Goblins/Zombies/Thrulls, but that doesn't help as it takes out both Goblins and Zombies. We could go Dwarves/Goblins/Thrulls, but that removes the "target power 2 or less" stage, as that has to be a Goblin, Dwarf, Wizard, or blue it looks like. Dwarves/Goblins/Zombies/Thrulls doesn't look like it will work either.
Hold on, I think the painland plan goes infinite after all. We can have the land untapped with a flashback mana floating. Then we trigger our Spellweaver Helixes and resolve the lifegain spell. Tap the land to regain the flashback mana and then do the normal transition stuff. After the Worldfire we can get the land back and get an extra life from the Fountain of Youth that we don't actually need to pay the land. After some manouvering that life can be used to go infinite by triggering the Spellweaver Volutes an extra time to recover all other ressources.
So we are back to the version we had before the break.
but it requires red mana (and the extra card). I'm wondering though if we can use Tsabo's Assassin / Blinding Drone to save a card on the 12-stage sequence. I don't see anything yet.
EDIT: What happens if we replace the painland with a shockland? Then, we have to pay the life right when the land enters the battlefield. But, I suppose that we can cast the flashback spell to transition to the next hyperstage with the land in the graveyard, then play Titania, Protector of Argoth to bring back the land after gaining some life in the higher hyperstage. We can then tap it to gain the mana which we can carry down to the lower hyperstage. Oh well.
EDIT: So, I've given a little thought to a more ambitious improvement. A hyper^3-stage seems very hard, with the biggest problem seeming to be if the hyper and hyper^2 stages are based on life and mana, we would need the hyper^3-stage to eliminate both mana and almost all our life. I suppose a possible solution is to have either the hyper or hyper^2 stage be based on something other than life or mana, like creature tokens of some kind. No real promising leads though.
A possibly easier improvement would be to add an additional hyperstage. Here we wouldn't have to worry about eliminating mana and life, and we could have it based on a different color mana as the most obvious option. But, we still have the problem that we appear to need multiple effects to be triggered, so it looks like we need some other triggering option other than {c]Spellweaver Volute[/c] or Spellweaver Helix. The other problem is what it is that we are triggering - the Volute gets us instants, and the Helix gets us sorceries. One possibility is that we have multiple permanents with triggered abilities that trigger off the same thing. Not sure what the ideal trigger would be though. Another possibility is to use X spells, since the Volute and Helix cast the triggered spells without paying their mana cost. A promising such spell is Displacement Wave, which brings back permanents of CMC X or less to our hand. If we cast that without paying its mana cost, it can only bring back Fountain of Youth (bringing back Black Lotus does nothing), so no infinite there. Bringing back permanents will allow the stage to be based on hasted creature tokens. So what could be the benefit of Displacement Wave? We've already used lands, so perhaps planeswalkers could be used here. We would have to have Teferi, Temporal Archmage so that we can use loyalty abilities as instants. (With Core Prowler we have no problem with activating ultimate abilities.) We have planeswalkers like Tezzeret the Schemer to get mana of any color back; or Jace, Telepath Unbound to cast an instant from the graveyard. Not quite sure how to make it work though. I still see at least two problems: One, we need some beneficial ability to get triggered, that will get us more hasted creature tokens of whatever kind. Two, we need Displacement Wave to get copied, so that we can reuse it at different stages.
Another possibility, which may be less promising now that my changes don't work, is to cast a spell and have that trigger the beneficial spell/ability. I tried that earlier with casting Obliterate as the only red spell, and having that trigger Dragon's Claw or Staff of the Flame Magus. We could then use that as the hyperhyperstage setup, and save Spellweaver Helix for the additional hyperstage. The problem of course is that, if we simply cast Obliterate, it will be on the stack when we need it for different hyperstages. How do we turn that into a copy, if we need to cast it to trigger Dragon's Claw? One idea I had was to use Mirari to get a copy, and then use Failure // Comply to return Obliterate back to our hand. (There's no use having two Obliterates in a row.) Unfortunately, we can put the Mirari trigger on top of the Dragon's Claw trigger, so that the life gain comes after the Obliterate. So we need something like Divine Congregration to be triggered that won't work after Obliterate resolves. Not sure what that could be... also, this particular setup has the problem that we are casting Obliterate with red mana, and we have to use Flash of Defiance for either Spellweaver Volute or Spellweaver Helix. So, still various problems.
More brainstorming... perhaps we could have Gelectrode as our primary stage, and then have some instant being cast as our primary hyperstage, which can untap all the Gelectrodes. The instant will have to get rid of the Gelectrodes, and also we need some way to cast it more cheaply than other instants and sorceries. (Perhaps a spell with CMC 2 or less that can be cast with Isochron Scepter? This seems incredibly unlikely though.) Then we could have Volute and Helix saved for later.
EDIT: So, if there are no further improvements, I have the current deck as:
The pre-Godtoucher stages are changed, under the theory that Goblin Welder gets you more mana than Basal Thrull. Maybe that one early blue mana from Volcanic Island would be enough to flip things around the other way - hard to tell.
EDIT: Another minor improvement: I think we might as well switch Allay with Ray of Revelation, since the mana we generate is white/green anyway. Also, we can leave Ray of Revelation in the graveyard, saving a card draw.
I had a thought while actually playing a game of magic the other day. I needed a Mirage Mirror to become 2 different things in a turn and had to stack up multiple activations. This has effectively no connection to almost any of the proposed decks ever because "2 mana: target permanent" is definitely going infinite with basically everything. But in no specific way, I feel like the card accomplishes the core goal of this challenge: don't go infinite. The card can copy things with abilities that would combo if they could be done at once, but if you want to switch back and forth between multiple things, you need to set the stack up all at once. For example, if you started with something like 40 mana, you could spend two at a time targeting Doubling Cube and Staff of Domination back and forth, let's say 6 times each for argument, then you tap it as Doubling Cube and pay 2 to double to 28, then 1 to untap, then 2 to double to 50, pay 3 and double to 94 etc... It's not exactly impressive numbers for this thread, but I'm just going for illustration of concept. The core of most of the big discoveries in this thread come from having a series of actions that would be infinite except you have to wait to get back to select triggers, and Mirage Mirror could theoretically make you wait to get back to select activated abilities.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Hmm - Since we are going over 60 cards anyway, we might as well try using the Evacuation-less version of the deck, which adds a couple cards. That should bring back into play sacrifice and ETB abilities. There really should be a 13-stage sequence with those in play.
EDIT: Well, we can take the Evacuation-less version, and replace Horobi, Death's Wail with Dismiss Into Dream. This adds a total of three cards, and the Rattleclaw Mystic addition adds four cards, so we are at +7. There's almost certainly a shorter version, but this is what I have for now.
Anyway we have a bigger problem to tackle. From the Spellweaver Volute gatherer rulings:
Say Spellweaver Volute’s ability triggers, then Spellweaver Volute leaves the battlefield in response. Then the instant card that was enchanted is removed from the graveyard in response. When the Volute’s ability resolves, it will check its last existence on the battlefield and identify the “enchanted card” as that instant card, so the card is copied and controller of the triggered ability may cast it.
I don't know what happens when Worldfire removes the aura and the instant simultaneously, but it sure sounds like we just need to destroy a Spellweaver Volute copy with Allay after it triggers and then it doesn't matter what happens to the instant, we get to cast it anyway. That means three things for us:
1. A single Acorn Harvest can cast many Retracts, the limit being how many Spellweaver Volute copies we can produce and destroy. I think we can keep our hyperstage transition safe as long as we replace Leyline of Anticipation with Vedalken Orrery. Then we can't replay the Fountain of Youth in between retracts, so we don't get any extra life. Having multiple Battle Cry just means we gain an extra layer for the stages there. Of course we'd need to remove the Cursebreak stuff and use multiple Fountains again.
2. After resolving Worldfire we can cast instants via Volutes that were triggered by the same sorcery as the Worldfire. Specifically we can resolve Worldfire, then Show and Tell putting Fountain of Youth into play and then the Retract, to gain an extra life, going infinite. In fact I don't think we can safely have Show and Tell in the deck, so we need to rework the start. That sounds worse than it is. I think we can get started if we replace Badlands+Show and Tell+Precursor Golem with Taiga+Chancellor of the Tangle+Channel. We lose a layer and our start is slower since we have room for two cards less in the starting hand, but we should still be able to get going and avoid infinites.
3. We can keep multiple instants on the stack for transitions. While previously we were limited to Retract or Worldfire, because we could only convert one spellweaver trigger into cast of a copy at a time, we now have the knowledge to successfully convert Volute triggers later, so we could for example use instants to recover lands after worldfire. I have not explored if we can actually use that to gain a card back, but I guess there is some potential to make room for the Precursor Golem again.
EDIT: It looks like the same ruling applies to Spellweaver Helix as well - if it leaves the battlefield while its ability is on the stack, then it will still cast the spell using last known information. So, we could potentially have another sorcery on the stack for before or after Worldfire goes off. I guess this isn't as appetizing because it requires another copy of Flash of Defiance.
Are you sure it applies to Spellweaver Helix? If so, does it apply to Mimic Vat as well? I think we might have a problem if it does there. But I think we previously concluded that there was no way to get a token out of that ability when the card left exile?
I have no idea how that last known information rule applies. It might be that the last known information of a card that is referred to in the abilite (i.e. enchanted card or card exiled with this) includes all the stuff about the card that you need to be copy it, as is apparently the case with that Spellweaver Volute ruling. Or it could be that the last known information is a pointer to "this game object" as I assumed it works for Mimic Vat, so as to not create a copy if the card is moved and the object disappears. Can someone clarify that for me?
Oh, I wasn't thinking about the imprinted card leaving exile - I was thinking as you did that we had to leave the card there. I meant we can allow the Spellweaver Helix to be exiled, and it would still go off. EDIT: I guess that still wouldn't allow us to use the imprinted card in multiple hyperstages that way.
Hmm, I thought there was a problem with Evacuation providing a "free" bounce to the later stage creatures if a token from the mimic vat activation can enter afterwards. But on second thought it doesn't really make a difference, since even if we can get a token of a creature that is no longer in exile this would require us to put the Mimic Vat ability on the stack before it leaves exile (and kill the Vat) and then we can't get it out of the graveyard/library without resolving Bloodbond March triggers which are all under the mimic vat activation. So it actually doesn't make any difference for us here, since exile/library/graveyard are mostly the same for us.
So, I was wondering how the start would go with the new setup. I'm having trouble getting started using Words of Wisdom. We can draw Consecrated Sphinx and Words of Wisdom on our opening draw, allowing us to draw four cards. It looks like these cards have to include Spellweaver Volute and a sorcery like Flash of Defiance. Whatever the other two cards are though, we will then have Words of Wisdom stuck in exile. We could draw Mirror of Fate to try to bring it out of exile, except that would bring just the Words of Wisdom into the library, and we would deck ourselves with the next Consecrated Sphinx trigger. We could play and activate Perpetual Timepiece to put some cards in the library - I guess that keeps things going. So we start off with:
1 Taiga
2 Mox Emerald
3 Channel
4 Black Lotus
5 Omniscience
6 Consecrated Sphinx
7 Words of Wisdom
8 Spellweaver Volute
9 Flash of Defiance
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Perpetual Timepiece
12 Words of Wisdom
13 Mirror of Fate
14 Dual Nature
15 Evacuation
We play Spellweaver Volute on Words of Wisdom. Play Vedalken Orrery, Opalescence, and Copy Enchantment, getting a token copy. Have both Copy Enchantment copy nothing, and its token copy copy Spellweaver Volute. Have the Spellweaver Volute token enchant Evacuation. Cast Flash of Defiance, triggering both Spellweaver Volutes. Put the Evacuation trigger on top of the Words of Wisdom trigger. Resolve Evacuation, returing Consecrated Sphinx and the enchantment creatures to our hand. Replay Dual Nature, getting an extra copy. Play Copy Enchantment, having it and its three token copies copy Dual Nature. Play Drake Familiar, getting triggers for six token copies. This will give us seven ETB abilities that can bounce Copy Enchantment; after replaying Copy Enchantment we will have 2,4,8,16,32,64, and 130 copies. (On the last replaying of Copy Enchantment have the original copy Dual Nature as well.) Play Consecrated Sphinx, getting 131 copies. When Words of Wisdom is resolved, we will get 132 abilities on the stack, each one drawing two cards.
At this point I think we are okay. We can draw Perpetual Timepiece again, and now we can get artifact copies so that we can use them without using the originals. Perpetual Timepiece can put Mirror of Fate back in the library, and Mirror of Fate can bring Words of Wisdom out of exile. And of course we can redraw Black Lotus for lots of mana.
The fourth Words of Wisdom should get us ~100 castings of Reality Spasm, and then we have 49 more Words of Wisdom after that, so that should get us over F_{w^3+w12+2}(50).
Selvala's Enforcer actually seems to be more effective than Words of Wisdom since we don't need to draw so much stuff just to keep going. After the starting hand we draw 3 of Consecrated Sphinx and the Enforcer: Evacuation, Dual Nature and Vedalken Orrery. Then we get to draw 5 cards (EDIT: optionally) with another Enforcer trigger already on the stack, and we have the ability to act at instant speed already.
Actually I'm trying to not put any more thoughts into this right now, first I want to think about other start alternatives and possible card saves.
EDIT: Blergh, my brain just can't let it be. There's a sweet line we can take:
Taiga, Mox Emerald, Channel, Black Lotus, Omniscience, Consecrated Sphinx, Selvala's Enforcer.
Play these, draw 3: Vedalken Orrery, Evacuation, Dual Nature.
Play these, replay Sphinx and Enforcer. Draw 5, leave one Enforcer trigger on the stack: Opalescence, Copy Enchantment, Drake Familiar, Spellweaver Volute, Flash of Defiance.
Play Opalescence, Volute on Evacuation, Copy Enchantment copying Volute on Evacuation, cast Flash of Defiance. Both Volutes trigger. Respond by playing Drake, bouncing both Volutes.
Resolve the first Volute Evacuation, returning Drake, Sphinx, Enforcer and Dual Nature to hand.
Play Dual Nature, get a token DN.
Play Copy Enchantment, both tokens become DN.
Play Drake, get 4 tokens. Bounce Copy Enchantment 4 times, replaying it each time, with tokens becoming DN. We now have 64 Dual Natures.
Last Drake bounces Opalescence.
Resolve the second Volute trigger. Thanks to Last-known-Information we cast another evacuation, returning Drake to hand.
Play Drake, get 64 tokens. Bounce Copy enchantment 65 times, doubling the number of Dual Natures each time. We now have 2^71 Dual Natures.
Play Sphinx, get some tokens.
Resolve the last Enforcer trigger.
We now get ~2^71 Sphinx trigger and can cast Reality Spasm and go through the full combo about that often. The opponent still has 50 cards, so this gets us to F_{w^3+w12+2}(51)
I had a thought of maybe using Mox Sapphire or Mox Jet for something, but since we can bring mana below the hyperstage transition, I don't know what it could be.
Since we have Mox Emerald now, we could conceivably switch to Calciform Pools if there was something cheap we wanted to use blue mana for. We could add Kiora's Dismissal and Izzet Guildmage in place of Drake Familiar and Allay, but that is a two for two tradeoff, and Drake Familiar is really nice in the opening. Could Izzet Guildmage be used somewhere else to save a card slot?
I also thought that since we can cast a lot of instants now per stage transition, we could get away with an instant that only resulted in one new hasted artifact creature. I don't know what that could be though. Targeting an artifact is not enough, since the Bloodbond March triggers will be stuck below or above all our instants. Bringing back an artifact from the graveyard could bring back Fountain of Youth or Black Lotus, and of course untapping an artifact could untap Mimic Vat. It could certainly help to switch from Battle Cry to something that helped artifact creatures instead.
Some things that could cut card slots:
An instant that returned all nonland permanents could open up three card slots. (It could replace Retract, Evacuation, Drake Familiar, and bring back Watcher of the Roost.) Similarly, artifacts and creatures could open up two card slots; artifacts and enchantments, or creatures and enchantments, could open up one card slot.
Something that would allow you to pay mana to bring enchantments back to your hand could replace Allay and Drake Familiar, saving a card slot.
Of course, something that could reduce all those Fountain of Youths... but we've certainly looked.
It would be nice to get rid of that second added stage, which needs three cards - putting Goblins somewhere later could be the key.
EDIT: This change sounds difficult to handle, but maybe it will work. What about making the Izzet Guildmage change, then adding Broken Ambitions to replace Cephalid Shrine and Perpetual Timepiece? Difficulties: We need to mill four cards at a time, but I think we could just work with a small (often empty) library. We will also win every clash, so we will mill four cards every time we need to counter a spell, whether we want to or not. Also, we lose the ability to move cards from our graveyard to our library. Does this mess up anything?
[EDIT] No wait, destroying Core Prowler is better, since we can destroy a whole bunch of them to cast Allay many times. The question is if this outweighs having to bounce and replay Vedalken Orrery before each new stage. I believe the answer is yes.
[EDIT] I think using Vedalken Orrery causes problems. We can't bounce it if there are still abilities on the stack and we still need to cast non-instants, unless we have a Vedalken Orrery token. But we can only get a token by playing Orrery or destroying it and imprinting it on a Mimic Vat. If we need to buffer against a Retract or Worldfire, then we need to have an Orrery token in play, then we can bounce the original Orrery, and replay it before the current token gets destroyed. But eventually the Dual Nature destruction trigger gets resolved, and we lose all our Orrery tokens, so we can't repeat the same trick.
Another replacement we could do is to replace one Fountain of Youth and Drake Familiar with Hoodwink and Glimmerpost. But the loss of Drake Familiar will make the start for this deck weaker.
But can we get Vedalken Orrery to work?
Assume we always have a token Orrery in play and the original in hand. before Retract or Worldfire we can then play the Orrery, respond to the Dual Nature token creation triggers with a Metallurgeon bounce on the Orrery. Then resolve all Dual Nature token destruction triggers, followed by one token creation trigger. Leave the rest of the token creations on the stack for after the transition resolves. So that would work.
We'd need to setup the token on the battlefield original in hand situation at the start. I suspect we need to use Mimic Vat there and redraw the Orrery once to avoid having to resolve the entire stack of draw triggers. So half a Sphinx trigger that could otherwise be used on something stronger. That little cost alone might make it not worth it.
EDIT: Or we can just bounce March of the Machines before resolving the Cowardice trigger on Vedalken Orrery, then Dual Nature won't trigger. Would still need the extra setup at the start though.
It would really be nice if there were an instant that returned all nonland permanents to our hand. Then that card could replace Retract, Evacuation, and Drake Familiar, and we could also replace two Fountain of Youths with a Watcher of the Roost, saving three cards! Looking at other cards, Kederekt Leviathan can do it too cheaply, since we can put triggers for Leyline of Anticipation and Omniscience on the stack and then keep replaying Kederekt Leviathan. Crush of Tentacles is too expensive.
[EDIT] Crazy idea: can we get rid of Allay? Without Allay, the topmost stage does nothing, but we don't necessarily need it to. We can have the enchantment bouncing come from Cursebreak, and we can throw Evacuation in there as well, since we don't need to go up to a higher stage. All the Psychic Battle triggers from Metallurgeon can serve to replay Acorn Harvest. We still need some mana generation, so we keep Core Prowler and Saltcrusted Steppe.
But no, we need some way to rebuild our progress after Worldfire, and Allay seems like the easiest way to do that. If there was a way to spend mana to return an enchantment (including Spellweaver Volute), that would be nice.
Paradoxical Outcome?
Reposting in case Paradoxical Outcome works and its draw makes you draw too much.
The
Necromancer (or Noob)
Cat.
Don't ask, I don't know why ether...
[EDIT] What if we replace Evacuation with a sorcery? Cards like Crush of Tentacles would get rid of Leyline of Anticipation and Omniscience, but Whelming Wave seems like a good option. Then, we would need a card that can gain life. Dispersal Technician seems to work, but then we would be replacing two cards with two cards. What would be nice would be to have a card that can recycle both Fountain of Youth and Drake Familiar.
What about Leonin Relic-Warder? We can have Dual Nature copies come onto the battlefield one at a time; each time we exile Fountain of Youth, and we can then destroy a Dual Nature token to destroy the Leonin Relic-Warder token, bringing Fountain of Youth back from exile. We can save the last Leonin Relic Warder token to exile Spellweaver Volute.
An issue is that we can exile Leyline of Anticipation and Omniscience, saving them from Worldfire. The objective of doing that would be to have Whelming Wave below Worldfire. But if we did that, we couldn't use Whelming Wave to bounce Leonin Relic-Warder, and the original would be exiled by Worldfire. So that doesn't look like an infinite.
But, we can play Leonin Relic-Warder in the lower hyperstage, gaining life, and then pass to the higher hyperstage and cast Whelming Wave, bringing it back to our hand. So that's a problem...
Stern Proctor and Saprazzan Bailiff are slightly different versions of Leonin Relic-Warder, but they seem to share the same problem.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Drake Familiar
13 Perpetual Timepiece
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Fountain of Youth
25 Cursebreak
27 Wormfang Behemoth
28 Marshalling the Troops
29 Worldfire
30 Increasing Confusion
31 Increasing Confusion
32 Increasing Confusion
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Titania, Protector of Argoth
35 Shivan Reef
36 Goblin Gardener
37 Mad Auntie
38 Facevaulter
39 Basal Thrull
40 Thrull Champion
41 Godtoucher
42 Everglove Courier
43 Nectar Faerie
44 Ghosthelm Courier
45 Possessed Aven
47 Maze Glider
48 Possessed Centaur
49 Eastern Paladin
50 Frightshroud Courier
51 Dwarven Warriors
52 Possessed Barbarian
53 Minion of Tevesh Szat
54 Reality Spasm
55 Precursor Golem
56 Kithkin Mourncaller
57 World at War
58 Wheel of Fortune
59 Show and Tell
60 Black Lotus
That should get us over F_{w^3 + w12 + 4}(2).
Being able to use a more normal flashback spell frees up the colors somewhat; we can have any combination of two colors from red, green, blue, black available for the latter stages, except for red and green. This may make it possible to reduce the cards needed for 12 stages, or maybe add a 13th stage.
EDIT: I found a way to end on Words of Wisdom. Replace Shivan Reef with Skyshroud Forest, so that red mana is available until the end. Use Spin Engine to allow red mana to target Minion of Tevesh Szat. Then Indomitable Creativity can fetch Black Lotus, which we can play and and get lots of Dual Nature copies, getting lots of red mana. Precursor Golem then adds two layers, and we can end on Consecrated Sphinx and Words of Wisdom as before. So the finish is:
Spin Engine
Indomitable Creativity
Precursor Golem
Consecrated Sphinx
Words of Wisdom
resulting in more than F_{w^3 + w12 + 4}(52).
I don't see anything going wrong with them. Although it has been a while since I've looked at the combo, so it is not fresh in my mind and I might be forgetting something. Still, lets assume it works.
I really like that Indomitable Creativity lets us use Black Lotus again outside of the opening.
EDIT: Of course 2 minutes after posting I notice a problem: Indomitable Creativity only gets one layer from Precursor Golem. Everytime we resolve a precursor trigger we get X copies. All of them get put on the stack at the same time and then trigger the Psychic Battles. So by the time we resolve the first copy, all of them already have their final target. That target then gets removed from the battlefield when we go through the hyperstage via Black Lotus from the first copy. So the rest of the copies do nothing and the layer doesn't work.
This is similarly to how Kithkin Mourncaller doesn't give us an extra layer, since all the extra attacking Kithkins will get removed when we combo via the draws from the first death. But I think you accounted for that one in the layer count, correct?
EDIT: I squeezed in a 13th stage! After Possessed Centaur we can bounce green creatures using Liberated Dwarf. Then the next stage will be Flamestick Courier, with Krark-Clan Stoker used to generate red mana. We link back to zombies with Dralnu's Crusade.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Drake Familiar
13 Perpetual Timepiece
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Fountain of Youth
25 Cursebreak
27 Wormfang Behemoth
28 Marshalling the Troops
29 Worldfire
30 Lingering Souls
31 Lingering Souls
32 Lingering Souls
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Titania, Protector of Argoth
35 Llanowar Wastes
36 Hurloon Shaman
37 Anaba Ancestor
38 Spectral Shepherd
39 Sea Scryer
40 Merfolk Sovereign
41 Godtoucher
42 Everglove Courier
43 Nectar Faerie
44 Ghosthelm Courier
45 Possessed Aven
47 Maze Glider
48 Possessed Centaur
49 Liberated Dwarf
50 Krark-Clan Stoker
51 Flamestick Courier
52 Dralnu's Crusade
53 Frightshroud Courier
54 Dwarven Warriors
55 Possessed Barbarian
56 Minion of Tevesh Szat
57 Reality Spasm
58 Selvala's Enforcer
59 Show and Tell
60 Black Lotus
Reality Spasm and Selvala's Enforcer should be enough for the end.
EDIT: Dangit, Dralnu's Crusade can pump up the Goblins too much, so that they can be targeted by Godtoucher. I feel like there should be a 13th stage somewhere though, especially now that we can use red mana just about anywhere.
EDIT: Some attempts: We could try to put Goblins after Zombies, but Enslaved Dwarf will kill off Minion of Tevesh Szat. We can't put them after Dwarven Warriors, and I don't know any of any other red creature that can tap to target itself (Other than Magma Sliver, but we can't add another Sliver to that). We could put them after Centaur Archer, but I don't know how to connect Flamestick Courier to Possessed Centaur. We could try putting them after Possessed Aven using Slingshot Goblin, but connecting Goblins to Centaur Archer looks like it takes at least another couple of cards.
Another idea would be to try to put at least three stages before Godtoucher. We can do Minotaurs/Merfolk and Goblins/Thrulls, but I don't see how to combine the two; both Thrulls and Merfolk seem to need to transition from Godtoucher, and I don't know how to produce blue mana with Goblins without also producing black mana. We could go Goblins/Zombies/Thrulls, but that doesn't help as it takes out both Goblins and Zombies. We could go Dwarves/Goblins/Thrulls, but that removes the "target power 2 or less" stage, as that has to be a Goblin, Dwarf, Wizard, or blue it looks like. Dwarves/Goblins/Zombies/Thrulls doesn't look like it will work either.
So we are back to the version we had before the break.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Drake Familiar
13 Perpetual Timepiece
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Fountain of Youth
25 Cursebreak
27 Wormfang Behemoth
28 Marshalling the Troops
29 Worldfire
30 Lingering Souls
31 Lingering Souls
32 Lingering Souls
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Titania, Protector of Argoth
35 Llanowar Wastes
36 Hurloon Shaman
37 Anaba Ancestor
38 Spectral Shepherd
39 Sea Scryer
40 Merfolk Sovereign
41 Godtoucher
42 Everglove Courier
43 Nectar Faerie
44 Ghosthelm Courier
45 Possessed Aven
47 Maze Glider
48 Possessed Centaur
49 Liberated Dwarf
50 Krark-Clan Stoker
51 Flamestick Courier
52 Possessed Barbarian
53 Devout Chaplain
54 Royal Assassin
55 Tsabo's Assassin
56 Blinding Drone
57 Reality Spasm
58 Selvala's Enforcer
59 Show and Tell
60 Black Lotus
but it requires red mana (and the extra card). I'm wondering though if we can use Tsabo's Assassin / Blinding Drone to save a card on the 12-stage sequence. I don't see anything yet.
EDIT: Another interesting pair is Phantasmal Mount / Old Man of the Sea, but that also conflicts with some other stages.
EDIT: What happens if we replace the painland with a shockland? Then, we have to pay the life right when the land enters the battlefield. But, I suppose that we can cast the flashback spell to transition to the next hyperstage with the land in the graveyard, then play Titania, Protector of Argoth to bring back the land after gaining some life in the higher hyperstage. We can then tap it to gain the mana which we can carry down to the lower hyperstage. Oh well.
EDIT: So, I've given a little thought to a more ambitious improvement. A hyper^3-stage seems very hard, with the biggest problem seeming to be if the hyper and hyper^2 stages are based on life and mana, we would need the hyper^3-stage to eliminate both mana and almost all our life. I suppose a possible solution is to have either the hyper or hyper^2 stage be based on something other than life or mana, like creature tokens of some kind. No real promising leads though.
A possibly easier improvement would be to add an additional hyperstage. Here we wouldn't have to worry about eliminating mana and life, and we could have it based on a different color mana as the most obvious option. But, we still have the problem that we appear to need multiple effects to be triggered, so it looks like we need some other triggering option other than {c]Spellweaver Volute[/c] or Spellweaver Helix. The other problem is what it is that we are triggering - the Volute gets us instants, and the Helix gets us sorceries. One possibility is that we have multiple permanents with triggered abilities that trigger off the same thing. Not sure what the ideal trigger would be though. Another possibility is to use X spells, since the Volute and Helix cast the triggered spells without paying their mana cost. A promising such spell is Displacement Wave, which brings back permanents of CMC X or less to our hand. If we cast that without paying its mana cost, it can only bring back Fountain of Youth (bringing back Black Lotus does nothing), so no infinite there. Bringing back permanents will allow the stage to be based on hasted creature tokens. So what could be the benefit of Displacement Wave? We've already used lands, so perhaps planeswalkers could be used here. We would have to have Teferi, Temporal Archmage so that we can use loyalty abilities as instants. (With Core Prowler we have no problem with activating ultimate abilities.) We have planeswalkers like Tezzeret the Schemer to get mana of any color back; or Jace, Telepath Unbound to cast an instant from the graveyard. Not quite sure how to make it work though. I still see at least two problems: One, we need some beneficial ability to get triggered, that will get us more hasted creature tokens of whatever kind. Two, we need Displacement Wave to get copied, so that we can reuse it at different stages.
Another possibility, which may be less promising now that my changes don't work, is to cast a spell and have that trigger the beneficial spell/ability. I tried that earlier with casting Obliterate as the only red spell, and having that trigger Dragon's Claw or Staff of the Flame Magus. We could then use that as the hyperhyperstage setup, and save Spellweaver Helix for the additional hyperstage. The problem of course is that, if we simply cast Obliterate, it will be on the stack when we need it for different hyperstages. How do we turn that into a copy, if we need to cast it to trigger Dragon's Claw? One idea I had was to use Mirari to get a copy, and then use Failure // Comply to return Obliterate back to our hand. (There's no use having two Obliterates in a row.) Unfortunately, we can put the Mirari trigger on top of the Dragon's Claw trigger, so that the life gain comes after the Obliterate. So we need something like Divine Congregration to be triggered that won't work after Obliterate resolves. Not sure what that could be... also, this particular setup has the problem that we are casting Obliterate with red mana, and we have to use Flash of Defiance for either Spellweaver Volute or Spellweaver Helix. So, still various problems.
More brainstorming... perhaps we could have Gelectrode as our primary stage, and then have some instant being cast as our primary hyperstage, which can untap all the Gelectrodes. The instant will have to get rid of the Gelectrodes, and also we need some way to cast it more cheaply than other instants and sorceries. (Perhaps a spell with CMC 2 or less that can be cast with Isochron Scepter? This seems incredibly unlikely though.) Then we could have Volute and Helix saved for later.
EDIT: So, if there are no further improvements, I have the current deck as:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Leyline of Anticipation
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Drake Familiar
13 Perpetual Timepiece
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Spellweaver Volute
24 Fountain of Youth
25 Cursebreak
27 Wormfang Behemoth
28 Marshaling the Troops
29 Worldfire
30 Flash of Defiance
31 Flash of Defiance
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Spellweaver Helix
34 Titania, Protector of Argoth
35 Badlands
36 Radiant Fountain
37 Hurloon Shaman
38 Anaba Ancestor
39 Spectral Shepherd
40 Goblin Welder
41 Mad Auntie
42 Godtoucher
43 Everglove Courier
44 Nectar Faerie
45 Ghosthelm Courier
47 Centaur Archer
48 Maze Glider
49 Possessed Centaur
50 Eastern Paladin
51 Frightshroud Courier
52 Dwarven Warriors
53 Possessed Barbarian
54 Minion of Tevesh Szat
55 Reality Spasm
56 Precursor Golem
57 Consecrated Sphinx
58 Words of Wisdom
59 Show and Tell
60 Black Lotus
Some minor changes from the last version:
The pre-Godtoucher stages are changed, under the theory that Goblin Welder gets you more mana than Basal Thrull. Maybe that one early blue mana from Volcanic Island would be enough to flip things around the other way - hard to tell.
Also, Marshaling the Troops looks insignificantly better than Divine Congregation, since each time we cast we will have a new set of untapped enchantments.
EDIT: Another minor improvement: I think we might as well switch Allay with Ray of Revelation, since the mana we generate is white/green anyway. Also, we can leave Ray of Revelation in the graveyard, saving a card draw.
Is there any hope for the ideas for an additional hyperstage?
EDIT: Whelp, I figured out how to get 13 stages:
Hurloon Shaman
Anaba Ancestor
Spectral Shepherd
Rattleclaw Mystic
Nosy Goblin
Mad Auntie
Facevaulter
Basal Thrull
Thrull Champion
Godtoucher
Everglove Courier
Only problem is that it requires four extra cards. I guess we could use it for the deck+sideboard challenge.
EDIT: Well, we can take the Evacuation-less version, and replace Horobi, Death's Wail with Dismiss Into Dream. This adds a total of three cards, and the Rattleclaw Mystic addition adds four cards, so we are at +7. There's almost certainly a shorter version, but this is what I have for now.
Prospective 60 card deck + 15 card sideboard:
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 March of the Machines
12 Phelddagrif
13 Cultural Exchange
14 Dual Nature
15 Copy Enchantment
16 Allay
17 Saltcrusted Steppe
18 Core Prowler
19 Metallurgeon
20 Acorn's Harvest
21 Battle Cry
22 Retract
23 Kiora's Dismissal
24 Spellweaver Volute
25 Fountain of Youth
26 Fountain of Youth
27 Fountain of Youth
29 Krosan Groundshaker
30 Divine Congregation
31 Worldfire
32 Flash of Defiance
33 Flash of Defiance
34 Flash of Defiance
35 Spellweaver Helix
36 Gem of Becoming
37 Walking Atlas
38 Perpetual Timepiece
39 Mountain
40 Hurloon Shaman
41 Anaba Ancestor
42 Spectral Shepherd
43 Rattleclaw Mystic
44 Nosy Goblin
45 Mad Auntie
46 Facevaulter
47 Basal Thrull
48 Thrull Champion
49 Godtoucher
50 Everglove Courier
51 Nectar Faerie
52 Ghosthelm Courier
54 Centaur Archer
55 Maze Glider
56 Possessed Centaur
57 Eastern Paladin
58 Frightshroud Courier
59 Dwarven Warriors
60 Possessed Barbarian
61 Minion of Tevesh Szat
62 Reality Spasm
63 Night Dealings
64 Backfire
65 Justice
66 Spiteful Visions
67 Spiritual Focus
68 Pain Magnification
69 Five-Alarm Fire
70 World at War
71 Winding Constrictor
72 Show and Tell
73 Black Lotus
74 Wheel of Fortune
75 Living Wish
Final damage: F_{w^3+w13+12} (F_{w^3+w13+11} (X)) for some large X.
EDIT: Hmm, Core Prowler messes up Night Dealings and Five-Alarm Fire. It might be nice to replace Core Prowler with some other way to safely generate mana, but I don't think we ever found another method.
So, how about:
Reality Spasm
Angelheart Vial
Backfire
Justice
Repercussion
Keldon Megaliths
Telekenetic Bonds
Pain Magnification
Ordeal of Purphoros
World at War
which should get [c]F_{w^3+w13+11}(F_{w^3+w13+10}(X)).
Anyway we have a bigger problem to tackle. From the Spellweaver Volute gatherer rulings: I don't know what happens when Worldfire removes the aura and the instant simultaneously, but it sure sounds like we just need to destroy a Spellweaver Volute copy with Allay after it triggers and then it doesn't matter what happens to the instant, we get to cast it anyway. That means three things for us:
1. A single Acorn Harvest can cast many Retracts, the limit being how many Spellweaver Volute copies we can produce and destroy. I think we can keep our hyperstage transition safe as long as we replace Leyline of Anticipation with Vedalken Orrery. Then we can't replay the Fountain of Youth in between retracts, so we don't get any extra life. Having multiple Battle Cry just means we gain an extra layer for the stages there. Of course we'd need to remove the Cursebreak stuff and use multiple Fountains again.
2. After resolving Worldfire we can cast instants via Volutes that were triggered by the same sorcery as the Worldfire. Specifically we can resolve Worldfire, then Show and Tell putting Fountain of Youth into play and then the Retract, to gain an extra life, going infinite. In fact I don't think we can safely have Show and Tell in the deck, so we need to rework the start. That sounds worse than it is. I think we can get started if we replace Badlands+Show and Tell+Precursor Golem with Taiga+Chancellor of the Tangle+Channel. We lose a layer and our start is slower since we have room for two cards less in the starting hand, but we should still be able to get going and avoid infinites.
3. We can keep multiple instants on the stack for transitions. While previously we were limited to Retract or Worldfire, because we could only convert one spellweaver trigger into cast of a copy at a time, we now have the knowledge to successfully convert Volute triggers later, so we could for example use instants to recover lands after worldfire. I have not explored if we can actually use that to gain a card back, but I guess there is some potential to make room for the Precursor Golem again.
I think we can save a card by replacing two Fountain of Youths with a Watcher of the Roost; then we can have both Evacuation and Retract on the stack for the end of the hyperstage.
EDIT: It looks like the same ruling applies to Spellweaver Helix as well - if it leaves the battlefield while its ability is on the stack, then it will still cast the spell using last known information. So, we could potentially have another sorcery on the stack for before or after Worldfire goes off. I guess this isn't as appetizing because it requires another copy of Flash of Defiance.
For example, we could add Crush of Tentacles to replace Drake Familiar and Evacuation. But this is a two for two tradeoff, and also we lose Watcher of the Roost.
EDIT: Ugh, with this ruling we can cast multiple copies of Evacuation, and it doesn't remove Vedalken Orrery. So we can't use Watcher of the Roost, I guess.
I have no idea how that last known information rule applies. It might be that the last known information of a card that is referred to in the abilite (i.e. enchanted card or card exiled with this) includes all the stuff about the card that you need to be copy it, as is apparently the case with that Spellweaver Volute ruling. Or it could be that the last known information is a pointer to "this game object" as I assumed it works for Mimic Vat, so as to not create a copy if the card is moved and the object disappears. Can someone clarify that for me?
In any case, Watcher of the Roost doesn't work, because we can replay it between Evacuations, as those don't bounce Vedalken Orrery.
But that is a good question about Spellweaver Helix / Mimic Vat.
What is the potential problem with Mimic Vat if we can indeed move the exiled card after Mimic Vat leaves the battlefield?
1 Taiga
2 Mox Emerald
3 Channel
4 Black Lotus
5 Omniscience
6 Consecrated Sphinx
7 Words of Wisdom
8 Spellweaver Volute
9 Flash of Defiance
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Perpetual Timepiece
12 Words of Wisdom
13 Mirror of Fate
14 Dual Nature
15 Evacuation
After we play Evacuation and replay Consecrated Sphinx, we will have 6 card draws, so:
16 Spellweaver Volute
17 Flash of Defiance
18 Opalescence
19 Copy Enchantment
20 Drake Familiar
21 Vedalken Orrery
We play Spellweaver Volute on Words of Wisdom. Play Vedalken Orrery, Opalescence, and Copy Enchantment, getting a token copy. Have both Copy Enchantment copy nothing, and its token copy copy Spellweaver Volute. Have the Spellweaver Volute token enchant Evacuation. Cast Flash of Defiance, triggering both Spellweaver Volutes. Put the Evacuation trigger on top of the Words of Wisdom trigger. Resolve Evacuation, returing Consecrated Sphinx and the enchantment creatures to our hand. Replay Dual Nature, getting an extra copy. Play Copy Enchantment, having it and its three token copies copy Dual Nature. Play Drake Familiar, getting triggers for six token copies. This will give us seven ETB abilities that can bounce Copy Enchantment; after replaying Copy Enchantment we will have 2,4,8,16,32,64, and 130 copies. (On the last replaying of Copy Enchantment have the original copy Dual Nature as well.) Play Consecrated Sphinx, getting 131 copies. When Words of Wisdom is resolved, we will get 132 abilities on the stack, each one drawing two cards.
At this point I think we are okay. We can draw Perpetual Timepiece again, and now we can get artifact copies so that we can use them without using the originals. Perpetual Timepiece can put Mirror of Fate back in the library, and Mirror of Fate can bring Words of Wisdom out of exile. And of course we can redraw Black Lotus for lots of mana.
The fourth Words of Wisdom should get us ~100 castings of Reality Spasm, and then we have 49 more Words of Wisdom after that, so that should get us over F_{w^3+w12+2}(50).
Can we do better?
Actually I'm trying to not put any more thoughts into this right now, first I want to think about other start alternatives and possible card saves.
EDIT: Blergh, my brain just can't let it be. There's a sweet line we can take:
Taiga, Mox Emerald, Channel, Black Lotus, Omniscience, Consecrated Sphinx, Selvala's Enforcer.
Play these, draw 3:
Vedalken Orrery, Evacuation, Dual Nature.
Play these, replay Sphinx and Enforcer. Draw 5, leave one Enforcer trigger on the stack:
Opalescence, Copy Enchantment, Drake Familiar, Spellweaver Volute, Flash of Defiance.
Play Opalescence, Volute on Evacuation, Copy Enchantment copying Volute on Evacuation, cast Flash of Defiance. Both Volutes trigger. Respond by playing Drake, bouncing both Volutes.
Resolve the first Volute Evacuation, returning Drake, Sphinx, Enforcer and Dual Nature to hand.
Play Dual Nature, get a token DN.
Play Copy Enchantment, both tokens become DN.
Play Drake, get 4 tokens. Bounce Copy Enchantment 4 times, replaying it each time, with tokens becoming DN. We now have 64 Dual Natures.
Last Drake bounces Opalescence.
Resolve the second Volute trigger. Thanks to Last-known-Information we cast another evacuation, returning Drake to hand.
Play Drake, get 64 tokens. Bounce Copy enchantment 65 times, doubling the number of Dual Natures each time. We now have 2^71 Dual Natures.
Play Sphinx, get some tokens.
Resolve the last Enforcer trigger.
We now get ~2^71 Sphinx trigger and can cast Reality Spasm and go through the full combo about that often. The opponent still has 50 cards, so this gets us to F_{w^3+w12+2}(51)
I had a thought of maybe using Mox Sapphire or Mox Jet for something, but since we can bring mana below the hyperstage transition, I don't know what it could be.
Since we have Mox Emerald now, we could conceivably switch to Calciform Pools if there was something cheap we wanted to use blue mana for. We could add Kiora's Dismissal and Izzet Guildmage in place of Drake Familiar and Allay, but that is a two for two tradeoff, and Drake Familiar is really nice in the opening. Could Izzet Guildmage be used somewhere else to save a card slot?
I also thought that since we can cast a lot of instants now per stage transition, we could get away with an instant that only resulted in one new hasted artifact creature. I don't know what that could be though. Targeting an artifact is not enough, since the Bloodbond March triggers will be stuck below or above all our instants. Bringing back an artifact from the graveyard could bring back Fountain of Youth or Black Lotus, and of course untapping an artifact could untap Mimic Vat. It could certainly help to switch from Battle Cry to something that helped artifact creatures instead.
Some things that could cut card slots:
An instant that returned all nonland permanents could open up three card slots. (It could replace Retract, Evacuation, Drake Familiar, and bring back Watcher of the Roost.) Similarly, artifacts and creatures could open up two card slots; artifacts and enchantments, or creatures and enchantments, could open up one card slot.
Something that would allow you to pay mana to bring enchantments back to your hand could replace Allay and Drake Familiar, saving a card slot.
Of course, something that could reduce all those Fountain of Youths... but we've certainly looked.
It would be nice to get rid of that second added stage, which needs three cards - putting Goblins somewhere later could be the key.
EDIT: This change sounds difficult to handle, but maybe it will work. What about making the Izzet Guildmage change, then adding Broken Ambitions to replace Cephalid Shrine and Perpetual Timepiece? Difficulties: We need to mill four cards at a time, but I think we could just work with a small (often empty) library. We will also win every clash, so we will mill four cards every time we need to counter a spell, whether we want to or not. Also, we lose the ability to move cards from our graveyard to our library. Does this mess up anything?