Hmm, so I guess the Changelings are out. I suppose there is still the possibility for Moggcatcher, but targeting it will be a problem; Giant Oyster for instance has the same CMC. The Explosives can't be used for CMC 4, and CMC 3 is already out. Starting from Skyshroud Archer would be nice; so the question is how to link flying creatures to Moggcatcher.
Ooh, very nice! It's not that bulky, it's only two more cards. Like Iijil said, get the deck working, then worry about optimizations.
Edit: Looking at the ending stages/layers for my version, even though Smite the Monstrous does not block all future creature stages, it looks like Doomed Necromancer does, since we can use his ability to retrieve a creature and not have to use Bloodbond March. And we have used all five colors as well. We might be able to get a snow mana stage, except the only way I know how is to bounce a creature with cycling or landcycling back to our hand - but Worldpurge can already do that, so I think it goes infinite. One thing we can try is to switch Worldpurge over to Worldfire. Worldfire has the advantage of not bringing our permanents back to our hand, so we probably don't need the Knights of the Reliquary trick, saving a couple of card slots. So it would be useful with or without a snow stage.
The only problem I am having is how to get life out of the megastage. ETB effects on creatures are out thanks to Panharmonicon. Safeguard Centaur looks useful, but then I realized that CMC 3 was not safe, since we don't have to put it in Mimic Vat, just destroy it. If you have any ideas how to get 3 life from the megastage, that would be great!
Edit: Stakfish, how is the latest plan going?
Edit: So, from what you have written, we can start with the following deck:
I'm not seeing any problems with the megastage. With the gigastage, we do have the problem of the Knight of the Reliquary able to be targeted, so that needs to be fixed.
Sorry, I've been away from my notes for the entire weekend, but that looks about right. The one issue, and it's one I've struggled with a bit, is finding a way to rebuy the soulshift creature: Forked=Branch Garami right now doesn't have a way to get it back. I fixed this with Kodama of the Center Tree, which can be brought back with Goryo's Vengeance. You can get the critical third spirit by switching from Thalia's Lieutenant to Dearly Departed: since the Departed has flying, it's not too difficult to arrange to have many mimic vat copies of it while hyperstaging, and also have the nontoken in the graveyard. Academy Rector is a human, so we can fairly easily turn a flyer-target or a Child of Alara into an insta-Omniscience, but that doesn't look like a problem in this version, since we also need Vedalken Orrery.
As for Knight of the Reliquary replacements... we're in some trouble. All the other multicolored creatures I could find that could put a land onto the battlefield can also put any nonland into our hand, breaking the megastage and the gigastage. One option, something I actually once experimented with in my standard combo as the way to get back life/energy from a damage effect, is World Shaper: we could discard the lands once we bounce them, then use the explosives to kill World Shaper, getting them back to our hand.
Hmm... I don't think we necessarily need to use a megastage instant to make the gigastage safe; it looks like Worldpurge will allow us to get three extra stages, from the bouncing of Engineered Explosives, Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and Boggart Mob. So if we can force two more usages of Engineered Explosives, then we should be okay.
What if we add Llanowar Scout? We don't have an easy way to target it, so we need to use two Explosives to get two hasted tokens. So maybe:
We need a second color to get Explosives there, but that's no problem. Is it an issue that we can also make a Metallurgeon with explosives at that count?
One other option that might be worth exploring: Lifespinner and Wild Pair. Horobi has the same total p/t as Dark-Dwellers, so we can sacrifice Horobi to a hasty Spinner, shuffle it back in, tutor it out, and then get Dark-Dwellers out with Wild Pair. Kitsune Mystic can directly target Lifespinner, but also Horobi. I'm not sure if that's a problem.
For your deck, I think that works. Pending lijil, we at least conditionally have a gigastage!
Edit: Shoot, we also need a way to recycle Wormfang Behemoth and Vile Redeemer after the gigastage transtion. Wormfang has to be brought back from the graveyard to the battlefield/hand, whie Vile Redeemer has to be brought back from the graveyard or battlefield to our hand, so it's a little tricky.
Wormfang seems easy: we just don't play it in the megastage, and keep it in hand after a Worldpurge in the gigastage.
Vile Redeemer is trickier.Ruins of Oran-Rief can target it, but it enters tapped, and it won't be easy to let it untap without breaking Breeding Pool. From Beyond can also fetch it, or I suppose Eye of Ugin.
Edit: Oof, I don't think that the Llanowar Scout idea works. The problem is the same trick as before, if we have 3 extra life then we don't need to get the lands back right away, and we can start the gigastage transition, using Engineered Explosives from the higher megastage to create Llanowar Scout tokens. As far as I can tell, we will have the same problem with Knight of the Reliquary or World Shaper. So this seems like a tough nut to crack.
Hmmm, you're right: we might have to rethink our approach. Could there be a way to make it so the megastage and gigastage transitions DON'T give us a hyperstage resource?
In other news, I think I've found a working stage for the standard combo:
It's identical in mechanism to the old one, but instead of using the unsafe Hatchling to give flash, it uses Dubious Challenge, copied by Naru Meha, Master Wizard. You reveal two Swordtooths, and you're guaranteed to get one, giving you all of the Panharmonicon triggers. You can bounce the Swordtooths back to hand, but in order to get them in the library, you have to spend 2 red Mana to discard them, then reshuffle them with Perpetual Timepiece. You can easily get the one your opponent takes in the graveyard with your damage triggers, but you need both to keep going, so you still have to spend a red Mana to discard the first one. So that effectively gives Swordtooth flash.
The only question is, can you go infinite with Dubious Challenge? I believe the answer is "no": you can reshuffle Paladin, Teshar, Muldrotha, etc., Into the library and reveal them with the challenge, but the goldfish can just choose to keep the alternative creature you're grabbing, and you'll need to bounce and discard, or kill, that creature before proceeding. Essentially, any line of play that can let you go infinite, the goldfish can fizzle. So I think that is safe.
According to the rules of our challenge, as set up by SadisticMystic, that would not be allowed; if there is a line of play that goes infinite, even with opponent's cooperation, then the deck is invalid. That being said, you are of course able to choose whatever rules you deem best for your deck.
For the Vintage challenge, it would be great if we could get away from having to soak up a usage of Engineered Explosives, but to do that it looks like we would need to move away from Engineered Explosives. You have any ideas in mind?
Damn. I can't say I love that rule (it means the goldfish wouldn't behave like a normal player would, though I suppose once you got to the second layer a normal player would concede), but I see its use and I don't think it would be reasonable to change it in a different format. The turn-1 rule made sense to remove, this does not.
If we can get both exchange spells on the stack to copy with Naru Meha, we can start by removing Baffling End, swapping it with Elenda, pumping Elenda, and killing her to create many, many Vampires. Switcheroo lets us switch those for Swordtooth, which lets us tap Swordtooth and exile it under Seal Away, and Shrewd Negotiation lets us switch all other vampires for noncreature artifacts that won't be killed or bounced. We can just use another negotiation to switch the noncreature for an artifact creature token, that we can then switcheroo to Swordtooth. Whenever we start running low on exchange targets, we can spend one life to replay Elenda, swap her over, and pump her to make lots more. Because the number of tokens we create scales with the combo, we only have to do this very rarely, and since we can bank up tokens, this can just translate to occasionally dropping an iteration of the top couple layers, not the whole stage.
Seal Away costs a life and can only exile one creature, so it's not profitable to exile anything else in the stage. If you try to exile a higher creature, you can, but then Swordtooth will get bounced, and you can't replay it, since it doesn't have flash. Either it gets bounced, or your other creature.
Both exchange spells are Sorceries, but getting both on the stack once isn't hard even in standard: Rashmi, Eternities Crafter and Helm of the Host the turn before, combined with any 6+ drop, will do the trick.
As I recall, in the old deck there was the problem of bring back Paladin of Atonement, destroying it to gain one life, then bringing it back, playing Legion Lieutenant to pump it up to 2 toughness, and destroying it again to gain 2 life. Is the goal still to gain 2 life? I'm not sure since there are a bunch of new white spells.
Maybe I'm not following the strategy correctly, but I wouldn't think that you could afford to spend life that you don't recover later, even occasionally. Aren't life/energy/red mana/white mana the stage resources? If so, if you want to generate X arrows (or 2X arrows) then you need to have X of your resources in some sense the whole time, either actually there or represented by the stack.
Yeah, it is. I believe that issue is eliminated in this newer version because, while you use a Naru Meha trigger to kill Seal Away and get back Raging Swordtooth, creating the triggers, you must have just prior spent a white Mana, the dangerous resource, to enable it. Combined with state-locking, I don't think it's possible to break.
What I see is, you can have a structure of triggers like:
Swordtooth triggers
Slinn Voda triggers
With Naru Meha triggers either above or below the Swordtooth triggers. The only way to generate life is by resolving Swordtooth triggers, killing Paladin. If Naru Meha is above Swordtooth, you can exile Swordtooth with Seal Away and kill Seal Away to get a new stack of triggers, at the cost of one white Mana/life. If you leave it on the bottom, Swordtooth can kill Teshar and Paladin (both, it can't just kill one, and there is no way to isolate Teshar without bouncing it AND Paladin, where bouncing Paladin fizzles the entire stack), for a profit of 1 life/white Mana. Then, we can spend the 1 life to exile Swordtooth, and use a Naru Meha trigger to kill Seal Away for a new stack of Swordtooth triggers.
If you do that, though, the state is still locked from playing Teshar, and we haven't bounced Muldrotha yet. We can't replay Slinn Voda until the next Slinn Voda trigger resolves, lower down the stack. So I believe that does stay finite.
As for the Elenda problem... Yeah, you're very right, I was wrong about how resources could accumulate on the stack. It needs a different way to turn one Baffling End token on the opposing side into many sustainable tokens. Polyraptor would work, but since it's not legendary we can't cast it after the bounce. What about Thorn Lieutenant? Each Onward//Victory we point at it creates an elf on the opponents side, and while it doesn't have flash, at 2cmc we can just always kill it before bouncing it and bring it back with Teshar.
Edit: I didn't do the best job explaining the new combo, so the white Mana accounted for: one white Mana+some Naru Meha triggers+an arbitrary artifact or creature under our opponents control can turn into lots of Raging Swordtooth triggers, by exchanging that random permanent with the Swordtooth, tapping it with a Naru Meha trigger on Djeru's Renunciation, exiling it with Seal Away (playable from the graveyard with Muldrotha), and using a Naru Meha trigger on Demystify to destroy the Seal Away, returning the Swordtooth. So the only thing you actually spend white on is either Seal Away or Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle.
But you can kill the Paladin without killing Teshar, just don't bring out Legion Lieutenant. Then you can bring the Paladin and Lieutenant back, and destroy it for a total of 3 life gained. Does that not work?
Thorn Lieutenant looks good, although things are complicated enough I am very nonconfident about saying that. We await Iijil.
Hmmm, that does work. Though, without the need for flash-granting, we don't need to limit ourselves to the Swordtooth... Chaos Maw? Then the damage is dealt in chunks of 3, not 1, and even one trigger is enough to kill Teshar.
I don't think that works, because you also have to bring back Teshar after killing Paladin the first time. That's impossible without consuming a Slinn Voda trigger lower down on the stack to unlock Muldrota, and even if it weren't that would require spending 2 life, eliminating the profit from the interaction.
Edit: oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, as a infinite preventer rather than a potential line that goes infinite, that definitely works. -1 Legion Lieutenant, and I need to read a bit more carefully.
Don't mind me, my head was stuck in Chaos Maw land. If Swordtooth is still the damager of choice, you're right, we can just cut the lieutenant.
One other nice thing about this version, assuming it works: because we never /cast/ the Swordtooth, it effectively is monowhite, so we can add that red layer you were talking about way back when. Something like Firesong and Sunspeaker and a safe burn spell, I think? Magma Spray?
That's exactly the idea: we can only gain life while F&S are out, and the next Slinn Voda to resolve will bounce them, and we'll have to replay them at the cost of a red Mana.
Though, we can probably make a profit there by playing Unclaimed Territory for Minotaur/Cleric, and eating the 1 life to play Raff... Poop. And we need the Territory to let us cheaply play Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage any time it gets bounced by Slinn Voda. So that exact one doesn't work.
Hmm, is Raff Capashen the only reason we need Unclaimed Territory? If so, what if we went back to Legion Lieutenant, allowing us to gain 3 life per Slinn Voda trigger? Or would that allow a non-Raff infinite?
The problem is that we need to replay Raff a LOT: in between each Slinn Voda trigger, if we want to get mileage out of Naru Meha. We need Muldrotha to play our Unwind targets from the grave.
I guess we can forego most of those triggers, but then I'm not sure if we can get enough untaps of our lands to cast our assorted spells. Each Slinn Voda trigger also corresponds to +1 untapping of an arbitrary land (we spend 8 on Muldrotha, Raff, Naru Meha, etc., and get 9 from playing Unwind 3 times. There might be a way, but it'll involve some tricky math.
Edit: linking the original standard stage combo write-up again, for reference:
As a side note, I would just like to point out that, assuming this stage combo even works, this is a 16-card combo where 8 of those cards are only necessary because Wizards couldn't be bothered to reprint Vedalken Orrery in Kaladesh.
Raff has to be replayed each time it is bounced by Slinn Voda, but Slinn Voda also bounces Muldrotha, which allows us to replay Teshar and gain 3 life? Or no?
Going back to the Vintage challenge, here's an idea I had: we seem to be having problems with the gigastage transition, since we get one or two extra uses of Engineered Explosives over the megastage transition, and the megastage transition has to be balanced in terms of Explosives usage. So we have to have the gigastage transition use up extra Explosives over the megastage transition somehow. This has been difficult, since the primary difference seems to be the moving of lands, but that stuff can be taken care of in the higher megastage.
But, what if we could bounce Goblin Dark-Dwellers in the megastage transition as well? Then we would need to use an extra Explosives in the megastage transition, but then the gigastage transition would match with the megastage transition and nothing more would need to be done.
So, perhaps if we switched out Boggart Mob with Facevaulter. That turns an extra Explosives into a soaked-up Explosives, as we need to use Moggcatcher to bring back Facevaulter. So I think having Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Engineered Explosives in our hand is cancelled out by having to bring back Facevaulter and Skyshroud Archer.
In the megastage transition, we use Smite the Monstrous, which can bounce Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and we can set up a stage for each copy of Smite the Monstrous. We use the last Smite the Monstrous to destroy Child of Alara.
The other option, which shaves a slot, is Bone Shredder, but that makes the megastage trickier.
Edit: Looking at the ending stages/layers for my version, even though Smite the Monstrous does not block all future creature stages, it looks like Doomed Necromancer does, since we can use his ability to retrieve a creature and not have to use Bloodbond March. And we have used all five colors as well. We might be able to get a snow mana stage, except the only way I know how is to bounce a creature with cycling or landcycling back to our hand - but Worldpurge can already do that, so I think it goes infinite. One thing we can try is to switch Worldpurge over to Worldfire. Worldfire has the advantage of not bringing our permanents back to our hand, so we probably don't need the Knights of the Reliquary trick, saving a couple of card slots. So it would be useful with or without a snow stage.
The only problem I am having is how to get life out of the megastage. ETB effects on creatures are out thanks to Panharmonicon. Safeguard Centaur looks useful, but then I realized that CMC 3 was not safe, since we don't have to put it in Mimic Vat, just destroy it. If you have any ideas how to get 3 life from the megastage, that would be great!
Edit: Stakfish, how is the latest plan going?
Edit: So, from what you have written, we can start with the following deck:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Metallurgeon
18 Battle Cry
19 Rebuild
20 Swarm Intelligence
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Boggart Mob
23 Moggcatcher
24 Panharmonicon
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Skyshroud Archer
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Thalia's Lieutenant
29 Abzan Falconer
30 Verdant Succession
32 Roar of the Wurm
33 Gloomwidow's Feast
34 Brace for Impact
35 Child of Alara
36 Elvish Spirit Guide
37 Forked-Branch Garami
38 Goryo's Vengeance
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Vile Redeemer
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Rude Awakening
43 Worldpurge
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Acorn Harvest
46 Radiant Fountain
47 Glimmerpost
48 Knight of the Reliquary
49 Yavimaya Dryad
51 Flash
52 Academy Rector
I'm not seeing any problems with the megastage. With the gigastage, we do have the problem of the Knight of the Reliquary able to be targeted, so that needs to be fixed.
As for Knight of the Reliquary replacements... we're in some trouble. All the other multicolored creatures I could find that could put a land onto the battlefield can also put any nonland into our hand, breaking the megastage and the gigastage. One option, something I actually once experimented with in my standard combo as the way to get back life/energy from a damage effect, is World Shaper: we could discard the lands once we bounce them, then use the explosives to kill World Shaper, getting them back to our hand.
What if we add Llanowar Scout? We don't have an easy way to target it, so we need to use two Explosives to get two hasted tokens. So maybe:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Metallurgeon
18 Battle Cry
19 Rebuild
20 Swarm Intelligence
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Boggart Mob
23 Moggcatcher
24 Panharmonicon
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Skyshroud Archer
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Dearly Departed
29 Abzan Falconer
30 Verdant Succession
32 Roar of the Wurm
33 Gloomwidow's Feast
34 Brace for Impact
35 Child of Alara
36 Elvish Spirit Guide
37 Kodama of the Center Tree
38 Goryo's Vengeance
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Vile Redeemer
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Rude Awakening
43 Worldpurge
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Acorn Harvest
46 Radiant Fountain
47 Glimmerpost
48 Llanowar Scout
50 Flash
51 Academy Rector
One other option that might be worth exploring: Lifespinner and Wild Pair. Horobi has the same total p/t as Dark-Dwellers, so we can sacrifice Horobi to a hasty Spinner, shuffle it back in, tutor it out, and then get Dark-Dwellers out with Wild Pair. Kitsune Mystic can directly target Lifespinner, but also Horobi. I'm not sure if that's a problem.
For your deck, I think that works. Pending lijil, we at least conditionally have a gigastage!
Edit: Updated deck.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Azorius Keyrune
17 Rust Tick
18 Meriok Scavenger
19 Molten Frame
20 Rebuild
21 Swarm Intelligence
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Boggart Mob
24 Moggcatcher
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Skyshroud Archer
29 Dearly Departed
30 Abzan Falconer
31 Verdant Succession
33 Roar of the Wurm
34 Gloomwidow's Feast
35 Brace for Impact
36 Child of Alara
37 Elvish Spirit Guide
38 Kodama of the Center Tree
39 Goryo's Vengeance
40 Wormfang Behemoth
41 Vile Redeemer
42 Spellweaver Helix
43 Rude Awakening
44 Worldpurge
45 Acorn Harvest
46 Acorn Harvest
47 Radiant Fountain
48 Glimmerpost
49 Llanawar Scout
51 Flash
52 Academy Rector
Edit: Shoot, we also need a way to recycle Wormfang Behemoth and Vile Redeemer after the gigastage transtion. Wormfang has to be brought back from the graveyard to the battlefield/hand, whie Vile Redeemer has to be brought back from the graveyard or battlefield to our hand, so it's a little tricky.
Vile Redeemer is trickier.Ruins of Oran-Rief can target it, but it enters tapped, and it won't be easy to let it untap without breaking Breeding Pool. From Beyond can also fetch it, or I suppose Eye of Ugin.
Edit: Oof, I don't think that the Llanowar Scout idea works. The problem is the same trick as before, if we have 3 extra life then we don't need to get the lands back right away, and we can start the gigastage transition, using Engineered Explosives from the higher megastage to create Llanowar Scout tokens. As far as I can tell, we will have the same problem with Knight of the Reliquary or World Shaper. So this seems like a tough nut to crack.
In other news, I think I've found a working stage for the standard combo:
It's identical in mechanism to the old one, but instead of using the unsafe Hatchling to give flash, it uses Dubious Challenge, copied by Naru Meha, Master Wizard. You reveal two Swordtooths, and you're guaranteed to get one, giving you all of the Panharmonicon triggers. You can bounce the Swordtooths back to hand, but in order to get them in the library, you have to spend 2 red Mana to discard them, then reshuffle them with Perpetual Timepiece. You can easily get the one your opponent takes in the graveyard with your damage triggers, but you need both to keep going, so you still have to spend a red Mana to discard the first one. So that effectively gives Swordtooth flash.
The only question is, can you go infinite with Dubious Challenge? I believe the answer is "no": you can reshuffle Paladin, Teshar, Muldrotha, etc., Into the library and reveal them with the challenge, but the goldfish can just choose to keep the alternative creature you're grabbing, and you'll need to bounce and discard, or kill, that creature before proceeding. Essentially, any line of play that can let you go infinite, the goldfish can fizzle. So I think that is safe.
For the Vintage challenge, it would be great if we could get away from having to soak up a usage of Engineered Explosives, but to do that it looks like we would need to move away from Engineered Explosives. You have any ideas in mind?
Okay, new plan, much more convoluted:
If we can get both exchange spells on the stack to copy with Naru Meha, we can start by removing Baffling End, swapping it with Elenda, pumping Elenda, and killing her to create many, many Vampires. Switcheroo lets us switch those for Swordtooth, which lets us tap Swordtooth and exile it under Seal Away, and Shrewd Negotiation lets us switch all other vampires for noncreature artifacts that won't be killed or bounced. We can just use another negotiation to switch the noncreature for an artifact creature token, that we can then switcheroo to Swordtooth. Whenever we start running low on exchange targets, we can spend one life to replay Elenda, swap her over, and pump her to make lots more. Because the number of tokens we create scales with the combo, we only have to do this very rarely, and since we can bank up tokens, this can just translate to occasionally dropping an iteration of the top couple layers, not the whole stage.
Seal Away costs a life and can only exile one creature, so it's not profitable to exile anything else in the stage. If you try to exile a higher creature, you can, but then Swordtooth will get bounced, and you can't replay it, since it doesn't have flash. Either it gets bounced, or your other creature.
Both exchange spells are Sorceries, but getting both on the stack once isn't hard even in standard: Rashmi, Eternities Crafter and Helm of the Host the turn before, combined with any 6+ drop, will do the trick.
Does that work?
Maybe I'm not following the strategy correctly, but I wouldn't think that you could afford to spend life that you don't recover later, even occasionally. Aren't life/energy/red mana/white mana the stage resources? If so, if you want to generate X arrows (or 2X arrows) then you need to have X of your resources in some sense the whole time, either actually there or represented by the stack.
What I see is, you can have a structure of triggers like:
Swordtooth triggers
Slinn Voda triggers
With Naru Meha triggers either above or below the Swordtooth triggers. The only way to generate life is by resolving Swordtooth triggers, killing Paladin. If Naru Meha is above Swordtooth, you can exile Swordtooth with Seal Away and kill Seal Away to get a new stack of triggers, at the cost of one white Mana/life. If you leave it on the bottom, Swordtooth can kill Teshar and Paladin (both, it can't just kill one, and there is no way to isolate Teshar without bouncing it AND Paladin, where bouncing Paladin fizzles the entire stack), for a profit of 1 life/white Mana. Then, we can spend the 1 life to exile Swordtooth, and use a Naru Meha trigger to kill Seal Away for a new stack of Swordtooth triggers.
If you do that, though, the state is still locked from playing Teshar, and we haven't bounced Muldrotha yet. We can't replay Slinn Voda until the next Slinn Voda trigger resolves, lower down the stack. So I believe that does stay finite.
As for the Elenda problem... Yeah, you're very right, I was wrong about how resources could accumulate on the stack. It needs a different way to turn one Baffling End token on the opposing side into many sustainable tokens. Polyraptor would work, but since it's not legendary we can't cast it after the bounce. What about Thorn Lieutenant? Each Onward//Victory we point at it creates an elf on the opponents side, and while it doesn't have flash, at 2cmc we can just always kill it before bouncing it and bring it back with Teshar.
Edit: I didn't do the best job explaining the new combo, so the white Mana accounted for: one white Mana+some Naru Meha triggers+an arbitrary artifact or creature under our opponents control can turn into lots of Raging Swordtooth triggers, by exchanging that random permanent with the Swordtooth, tapping it with a Naru Meha trigger on Djeru's Renunciation, exiling it with Seal Away (playable from the graveyard with Muldrotha), and using a Naru Meha trigger on Demystify to destroy the Seal Away, returning the Swordtooth. So the only thing you actually spend white on is either Seal Away or Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle.
Thorn Lieutenant looks good, although things are complicated enough I am very nonconfident about saying that. We await Iijil.
Edit: oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, as a infinite preventer rather than a potential line that goes infinite, that definitely works. -1 Legion Lieutenant, and I need to read a bit more carefully.
One other nice thing about this version, assuming it works: because we never /cast/ the Swordtooth, it effectively is monowhite, so we can add that red layer you were talking about way back when. Something like Firesong and Sunspeaker and a safe burn spell, I think? Magma Spray?
Though, we can probably make a profit there by playing Unclaimed Territory for Minotaur/Cleric, and eating the 1 life to play Raff... Poop. And we need the Territory to let us cheaply play Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage any time it gets bounced by Slinn Voda. So that exact one doesn't work.
I guess we can forego most of those triggers, but then I'm not sure if we can get enough untaps of our lands to cast our assorted spells. Each Slinn Voda trigger also corresponds to +1 untapping of an arbitrary land (we spend 8 on Muldrotha, Raff, Naru Meha, etc., and get 9 from playing Unwind 3 times. There might be a way, but it'll involve some tricky math.
Edit: linking the original standard stage combo write-up again, for reference:
http://alex.shankland.org/index.php/2018/06/13/how-to-deal-more-than-grahams-number-damage-in-magic-the-gathering/
And what the new list roughly looks like, though there may be infinites in the old setup:
2 Llanowar Elves
3 Llanowar Elves
4 Blooming Marsh
5 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
6 Shefet Dunes
7 Aether Hub
8 Aether Hub
9 Aether Hub
10 Aether Hub
11 Unclaimed Territory
12 Hope Tender
13 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
14 Island
15 Island
16 Anointed Procession
17 Anointed Procession
18 Anointed Procession
19 Anointed Procession
20 Sparring Mummy
21 Merfolk Branchwalker
22 Iron League Steed
23 Overflowing Insight
24 Overflowing Insight
26 Cogwork Assembler
27 Raff Capashen, Ship’s Mage
28 Ghirapur Orrery
29 Samut, Voice of Dissent
30 Sea Legs
31 Nissa, Genesis Mage
32 Traveler’s Amulet
33 Raging Swordtooth
34 Seal Away
35 Djeru's Renounciation
36 Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
37 Naru Meha, Master Wizard
38 Switcheroo
39 Shrewd Negotiation
40 Demystify
41 Unwind
42 Onward//Victory
43 Marwyn, the Nurturer
44 Baffling End
45 Thorn Lieutenant
46 Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle
47 Paladin of Atonement
48 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
As a side note, I would just like to point out that, assuming this stage combo even works, this is a 16-card combo where 8 of those cards are only necessary because Wizards couldn't be bothered to reprint Vedalken Orrery in Kaladesh.
Going back to the Vintage challenge, here's an idea I had: we seem to be having problems with the gigastage transition, since we get one or two extra uses of Engineered Explosives over the megastage transition, and the megastage transition has to be balanced in terms of Explosives usage. So we have to have the gigastage transition use up extra Explosives over the megastage transition somehow. This has been difficult, since the primary difference seems to be the moving of lands, but that stuff can be taken care of in the higher megastage.
But, what if we could bounce Goblin Dark-Dwellers in the megastage transition as well? Then we would need to use an extra Explosives in the megastage transition, but then the gigastage transition would match with the megastage transition and nothing more would need to be done.
So, perhaps if we switched out Boggart Mob with Facevaulter. That turns an extra Explosives into a soaked-up Explosives, as we need to use Moggcatcher to bring back Facevaulter. So I think having Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Engineered Explosives in our hand is cancelled out by having to bring back Facevaulter and Skyshroud Archer.
In the megastage transition, we use Smite the Monstrous, which can bounce Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and we can set up a stage for each copy of Smite the Monstrous. We use the last Smite the Monstrous to destroy Child of Alara.
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Azorius Keyrune
17 Rust Tick
18 Meriok Scavenger
19 Molten Frame
20 Rebuild
21 Swarm Intelligence
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Facevaulter
24 Moggcatcher
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Skyshroud Archer
28 Dearly Departed
29 Abzan Falconer
30 Verdant Succession
32 Roar of the Wurm
33 Smite the Monstrous
34 Child of Alara
35 Elvish Spirit Guide
36 Kodama of the Center Tree
37 Goryo's Vengeance
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Vile Redeemer
40 Spellweaver Helix
41 Rude Awakening
42 Worldpurge
43 Acorn Harvest
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Radiant Fountain
46 Glimmerpost
47 Titania, Protector of Argoth
48 Eye of Ugin
50 Flash
51 Academy Rector