Edit: So, it looks like the deck in post #1695 doesn't quite work, as we can use a cheap Goryo's Vengeance to bring Dralnu, Lich Lord back to the battlefield with haste. Stakfish, do you know another way to make a stage with Rust Tick, without using Goryo's Vengeance or Rend Spirit? Rend Spirit is no good either since we are still using Simian Spirit Guide in the megastage.
Edit: Hmm, I've found another problem: Flash is not good in conjunction with Child of Alara and Worldpurge. After Worldpurge brings Child of Alara back to our hand, we can cast Flash to put it on the battlefield and sacrifice it, getting an additional megstage mana. Not good.
So Channel is out, Genesis Wave is out, Black Lotus is out, and Flash doesn't currently work. Does anyone know of other ways to get started?
Hmmmm, that's annoying. One option is some kind of Fastbond/lands/Sacrifice effect to produce the mana and sacrifice for rector. Sorry, I've been focused on other projects, including getting the write-up done for the standard combo (there's a deadline for that one, I want to be able to post it before Guilds of Ravnica previews start), but I still think the best option we have is to try to make a Worldfire version work: even if it introduces its own set of problems (using up explosives casts afterwards, etc.), it seems like it fixes enough others to be worth it.
In any case, for the Rust Tick problem, I don't see any that don't break with your setup there: most of my alternatives require green mana being plentiful.
Oh, I completely understand! I was just thinking that it makes sense for you to focus on the Standard deck, there is basically two months for it to be "Beating Graham's Number in Standard" rather than "Beating Graham's Number in an old version of Standard". I hope Iijil comes back soon, particularly for the sake of that Standard deck.
Actually, the deck in post #1695 does have plentiful green mana, so if you mentioned your alternatives whenever you have time, that would be very helpful!
Fastbond doesn't seem that good for the opening hand, since you need two cards to cast it, then each additional land gets you one mana (or two colorless, but there are artifacts that get that as well).
Ahhh, I missed that suggestion. Sadly, it's not enough: we can still generate a net-positive amount of mana just with Naru Meha copying Unwind, no Samut necessary. We have to, otherwise we don't have the ability to pay for Muldrotha. It's less efficient, but I think it's enough to still go infinite in that level.
In one small bit of good news there, I've figured out a way to get one more run of the card-draw layer: If we arrange the stack so that it's
we can run through 3 iterations of the Silent Gravestone combo, enough to get us to 2->3->4->3. Then we can counter our spells, tuck them and draw them with some spare Gravestone draws (not too hard, as long as you stack everything right), play the fourth gravestone, and make it a creature with The Antiquities War Then we hardcast Switcheroo in the main phase, and do two more runs of the draw layer. That brings the total up to 2->3->6->3, which may be the most we can get out of standard, given the fairly short time frame to finish it (I'm hoping to have a write up done, checked, and published before the end of August).
Nice. I take it that both the 4 Silent Gravestone + 4 The Antiquities War strategy to get 2 -> 3 -> 10 -> 3, and the Skyship Plunderer strategy to get 2 -> 3 -> (2 -> 3 -> 9 -> 3) -> 3 damage, are no longer available? What is the reason they no longer work?
I still think that Ghitu Chronicler has some potential, even if it doesn't have flash. That just means that it may be harder to get layers above it, but there are still layers below it so it is still pretty good. If we can just turn energy into a comparable amount of life, not even getting any layers off of it, then a red mana will be equivalent to one Silent Gravestone combo, and we can beat 2 -> 3 -> 6 -> 3 if we can get more than five red mana.
I didn't see an easy way to turn energy into life, but the following seems to work: replace Bloodwater Elemental with Dukhara Scavenger, and then add Shielded Air Thief When Slinn Voda bounces Muldrotha, Dukhara Scaveger, and Shielded Air Thief, we can two castings of Teshar, one from putting it into the library and drawing it, the other through Muldrotha. So we wind up gaining life each time we do this, but only at the cost of energy. So this should convert energy into life.
For red mana, there are two Chandras that can add four red mana, which should take us to 2 -> 3 -> 5 -> 3. Then, we can attack with Grand Warlord Radha, taking us to more than 2 -> 3 -> (2 -> 3 -> 5 -> 3) -> 3; finally, we can hit the opponent with a blast spell.
Yeah, both of those are ruined by Switcheroo: the fact that we need a sorcery on the stack to copy means we can't weave comboing off between The Antiquities War triggers, and the fact that we can donate Paladin of Atonement and kill it to give our opponent life means that their life total and ours are interchangeable resources.
That's an interesting combo with the Scavenger! The problem is that it won't have flash and can't be rebought with Teshar. In past versions we could put that on the bottom, but in the Switcheroo version that's a killer. That said, if we can find some other kind of shenanigans to give it flash, nothing would make me happier than to be able to draw another layer from the "if only Vedlaken Orrery were legal..." drawer, which is at this point getting quite overcrowded.
Oh right, I keep forgetting about everything needing flash :p.
But, I just realized that an old trick actually works - using Adjani Unyielding to exile a creature and gain lots of life, and using Dynavault Tower to destroy it at the cost of energy. This can only be done at sorcery speed, but that's okay - all we lose are the ability to have many triggers of Ghitu Chronicler on the stack; we can still just draw as many instants and sorceries as we have one time. The layer we lose by not running the combo with triggers on the stack is cancelled out by the extra energy -> life layer. I believe it's the same for Silent Gravestone. So if we have 4 Silent Gravestones and N instants and sorceries in the deck, then we can generate 2 -> 3 -> 4N+1 -> 3 creatures before combat, and then combat takes us to 2 -> 3 -> (2 -> 3 -> 4N+1 -> 3) -> 3.
Edit: Apex of Power and Song of Freyalise look interesting, but unfortunately I think they both go infinite. I think Song of Freyalise would have worked in the previous version, but now we can recur enchantments.
Ooh, interesting. I don't see how we can keep Switcheroo on the stack that whole time, but if we can crack that, energy->life would be an amazing add.
Keeping Switcheroo around is going to be tricky, but now that we only need one sorcery on the stack it's at least somewhat easier. There might be some kind of shenanigans involving Sunbird's Invocation, if we can be careful enough about what goes back in our library.
On a similar note, I've found a new way to improve the setup for the combo, and a small problem: first, Planar Bridge. We can't restock permanents in our library, so it can't interact with our combo, we can activate it for just 15 generic by copying it with Cogwork Assembler and keeping the copy, and because we can easily send it to the graveyard again, it can also serve as the dummy artifact we counter with Unwind, so we can cut Traveler's Amulet.
The small problem is that, since Slinn Voda bounces Thorn Lieutenant and we can only save one opposing creature through the Voda bounce, as we build the stack up we need to spend a life to play Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle before each Swordtooth run, as well as the white Mana to play Seal Away. It doesn't break the combo, because we only have to do it on the initial buildup on the stack and not the layer transitions, but it reduces the effiency of the combo from 2 layers per life to 1. I imagine there's also a workaround with Paladin, but since it won't meaningfully impact our total, I don't know that it's worth overcomplicating it.
Edit: I just found a much bigger problem while doing the write-up: because Slinn Voda bounces the Lieutenant, we need to bring it back each time we're about to spend a white to make Swordtooth triggers, which means each time we do so, we have to cast a Teshar to reanimate it, which means we have to cast a Raff Capashen just before. That means Raff will be on the battlefield when we run out the Swordtooth, and it will die before Slinn Voda. Once Raff dies, we can't continue the combo until the entire stack resolves, if at all, so that's something we need to solve.
Other than indestructible, I thought about increasing Raff's toughness or decreasing Slinn Voda's. I don't know how to damage Slinn Voda or decrease its toughness without being able to kill it. Naru Meha and four Favorable Winds will almost get us there...
Edit: Maybe a second Muldrotha? One to bring back Raff, one to bring back Teshar. No, we'd need a way to bring Muldrotha back from the graveyard.
What about second Merfolk? Then we can force our opponent to have two creatures, both of which can survive a Slinn Voda trigger resolving. One can be swapped for Swordtooth, the other sticks around to be swapped with Lieutenant later.
On a similar note, the combo right now calls for using a Naru Meha, Máster Wizard trigger to copy Demystify when we make the Swordtooth, then immediately play Naru Meha so we can exchange/tap the dinosaur. The same solution works: second Naru Meha, so one pops the Seal Away, one exiles the Swordtooth again. They both wind up in the graveyard, but then we just play Muldrotha, play Slinn Voda, bounce Muldrotha a couple times, and get both Naru Mehas back to hand.
We also need to have Muldrotha out to play Seal Away after destroying it, but it doesn't need to be out the whole time: we can resolve 7 Swordtooth triggers, then play Raff/Muldrotha, Seal Away the dinosaur, let the last trigger kill Slinn Voda, and replay her for bounces.
Because this combo just wasn't convoluted enough to play...
Looking at how to get more layers, I haven't figured out how to save Switcheroo, unless we use something like Failure // Comply. But then we need to get rid of Dynavolt Tower. So we can have X energy turn into 2 -> 3 -> X -> 2 Panharmonicons, but I don't know how to get a lot of energy.
If we try to turn energy into life without needing sorcery speed... we can try to use Shielded Aether Thief, if we can turn card draw into life or white mana, but I don't see how.
Edit: Can we use Djinn of Wishes to put a Switcheroo of the stack after the third part of The Antiquities War resolves? Or is Djinn of Wishes unsafe? It looks like it might be.
The issue with Djinn of Wishes is that it gets bounced during the stage, and we don't have a way to give it flash. I'm deeply worried about how we would build on top of Shielded Aether-Thief, but... On Serra's Wings? We can use it to enchant the Swordtooth so each trigger would gain a huge amount of life, but if we do, we have to play it with Muldrotha, which means we need to somehow reset Muldrotha, without casting Slinn Voda (if we do it that way, we bounce the Swordtooth and fizzle down to sorcery speed again). Then, some way to tuck Muldrotha, and we draw it with the Thief?
Edit: actually, if we can link that with some Aftermath Instants, we might be able to at least get more iterations of 2->x->x->3 than with Gravestone. Though now that I look at the options, the only aftermath instant that doesn't go infinite is Refuse//Cooperate, which seems awfully limited.
Or here's a wild thought: what if we used cycling Instants and Abandoned Sarcophagus? We might be able to get a layer out of casting a cycling instant with it and removing all our copies before the instant resolves. In fact, even if we can't do that, we can play a Sarcophagus, cast a cycling instant, get the energy, spend all that energy, cast another one, get way more energy, repeat until all our cycling Instants are on the stack, then Forsake the Worldly our Sarcophagus. So it's the same limiting factor of "only 4 of the artifact to exile", but instead of one run of the ->3 layer for every copy in the deck, we get a run for every cycling instant we can cram into the deck.
EDIT: hold up, that's a layer on its own! Each time we cast a Sarcophagus, we can put a bajilion Cogwork Assembler triggers copying it on the stack, and then each one lets us replay Forsake the Worldly from our graveyard.
Or no, no that goes infinite. We can resolve one token-maker, then put a bajilion more activations copying it on the stack.
Or does it? We need the original to be on the battlefield or the Assembler won't know what to target, I don't think last-known-information works here. So I guess that doesn't work after all.
One more edit: I haven't gone through with any card links, but I have a very rough draft of a write-up ready. It doesn't take into account anything beyond Silent Gravestone/The Antiquities War, but even if nothing else works I'm pretty sure we'll be able to improve that by cutting as many cards from the setup as possible and switching to max cycling instants and Abandoned Sarcophagus.
I'm not clear on what the purpose would be to have many copies of Abandoned Sarcophagus. Abandoned Sarcophagus doesn't cast the card, it just has a static ability that allows cards with cycling to be played from the graveyard. So I don't see how it keeps up with Silent Gravestone - Silent Gravestone lets us draw a bajillion instants/sorceries, which we can cast for energy, while with Abandoned Sarcophagus it looks like we can cast each card with cycling once, then we have to exile the Abandoned Sarcophagus? How do we get a bajillion instant castings per Sarcophagus?
We don't, but if we can leverage a bit of energy into a lot of life with Aether Thief, the Sarcophagus will operate at the same level as the Gravestone, but each of our 5 Sarcophagi (counting the Antiquities War) will count for several iterations
Ah, I see; so it's not quite done yet. We don't want to be able to draw our instants or sorceries, so the only card I see that we can use is Dukhara Scavenger. Would it be possible to do Thorn Lieutenant / Switcharoo / Seal Away shenanigans with the Scavenger?
Hmmm... I don't think two Seal Away is safe. We can use the second one to save Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle and go through the stage without having to reset the state. So that's out.
I was gonna say Run Aground, but I forgot it hits artifacts too. I never thought I would miss Griptide...
Edit: Actually, an interesting question: how would this challenge change, if at all, if it allowed some constant number of additional turns? Or put another way, if we define the function M(n) as the greatest finitely bounded amount of damage which can be dealt in a game of Vintage magic (with no sideboard) on turn n, would that function grow particularly quickly?
Based on the current decks, which wouldn't get much value from the extra turn, it seems like the answer is "no", and that it's actually a fairly slowly-growing function that just has a very high starting value, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.
If Run Aground works to gain life, that would be great! Being able to target artifacts seems okay; we don't need Abandoned Sarcophagus, we can use Ghitu Chronicler to cast many more instants than we could with the Sarcophagus. If we can put four The First Eruptions onto the battlefield the turn before, we can use the eight red mana to get to something like 3 -> 3 -> 9 -> 4, and then we attack with Radha to get to 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 9 -> 4) -> 4.
Yeah, for most of our decks it doesn't much matter if we get extra turns; maybe we could turn that into an extra layer or two. The biggest difference would be if it is tough to get started; for example, in our current gigastage deck, we have precious few card slots, and getting started might cost us a few stages.
Edit: Thinking about the theoretical optimal solution, I imagine the circumstances are the same; being restricted to a few turns just means that you will have to devote a very few number of cards to getting set up. In some unusual circumstances this might cause you to just miss being able to complete a powerful construction, but I think it is more likely that the loss will be minor, e.g. you might miss a few stages.
Of course, this is calling a function "slow-growing" if it gets close to its natural place in the fast-growing hierarchy at low values, but that is not really what slow-growing means. For example, TREE(n) grows at the level of theta(Omega^omega * omega) in the fast-growing hierarchy, and already TREE(3) is roughly in that neighborhood, but people don't normally call TREE(n) slow-growing!
Edit: Speaking of the Vintage challenge, I was thinking about it for a bit. I had the happy thought that perhaps Centaur Safeguard could be retrieved after gigastage transition by resolving down the the next megastage transition and getting to a Verdant Succession trigger; this would not only allow us to take care of retrieving Centaur Safeguard without any further cards, it would also take care of any extra uses of Engineered Explosives we would have from the gigastage transition. Alas, if the only way to kill Centaur Safeguard is by destroying Child of Alara, then the Verdant Succession triggers are going to go above any trigger for putting a Vedalken Orrery token on the battlefield, so we won't be able to restart the megastage without resolving all the Succession triggers. So it doesn't look like that perfect scenario can happen.
So, I didn't think of a nonklutzy way to bring back Centaur Safeguard, so I just added River's Rebuke to the deck; I don't think that will eliminate future creature stages, because when you resolve it it eliminates all creature tokens. We still need to handle extra Engineered Explosives, so I went back to Dralnu, Lich Lord. For the Skyshroud Archer problem, I figured we could add another Skyshroud Archer; then we could use one Explosives to destroy the Archers, and another to destroy Nantuko Tracer, getting two Archers for two Explosives, which should work out correctly. So we have:
Good catches! I sunk a lot of cards into the setup to knock a turn off the clock, that should be reflected.
One problem with Ghitu Chronicler though: we have to pick all the targets simultaneously, so we can't use each trigger to separately get an instant cast.
That list looks good! A few things:
I think we can swap both Shriekhorn and Cephalid Shrine for Broken Ambitions like in the old stage write-up, saving a card. Similarly, Kiora's Dismissal means we don't need to save Allay in hand, which might even mean we could cut Wormfang Behemoth, since I'm not sure what else we need to keep in hand during the megastage.
I think Dralnu goes infinite there: we can tap it to give Acorn Harvest flashback without paying life, flashback it that way, etc.
You're missing Salvaging Station from the megastage. In fact, all our lists have for a page or so now, I think.
The second Skyshroud Archer doesn't fix the problem: even if it lets us get the first one back, when the second one dies, we won't be able to reshuffle the first one in. What if instead we put in Reclaim over the Tracer? We have to play it while the death trigger for Child is on the stack, which means playing Goblin Dark-Dwellers. After that, we have no way to bounce it, so it dies from Child of Alara/sacrifice, and winds up in our library. We get one natural explosives post-child, but that's not enough to get back Skyshroud Archer: for that, we need to have spent the earlier natural explosives we got to make a lot of Verdant Succession triggers, and that accounts for the second one. So I think that actually works while saving a slot to boot.
In fact, as I think about it, if we can make it so we don't really need any cards in our hand the whole time, that will eliminate a lot of problems: there won't be any way to get extra explosives after the gigastage! That would be an absolute coup for us, and make the entire thing much easier to fit together. If we can't save cards in our hand post-gigastage, then I think Eureka becomes safe as a setup card.
Edit: there are a couple solvable problems and one tricker one here. Reclaim can be copied by Izzet Guildmage and we need it to be Dwellers-only, but Bone Harvest seems fine.
By sacrificing Centaur Safeguard to Natural Order, we can gain 3 life after a Worldfire. But the trigger goes on top of the original cast, so if we swap out our countering tool for something that can't hit Worldpurge, like Essence Scatter, we're fine: even if we gain the life that way, it will get blanked by the OG Worldfire cast below it.
The trickier problem is that I missed that we store our artifacts in our hand while Worldfire resolves, so we need a way to get those back. Hmmm.
Ooh, good point about Ghitu Chronicler. Still, we can fetch every instant and sorcery in the deck, so if we can generate M red mana pre-combat, and have N instants/sorceries, then we can get 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> NM+1 -> 3) -> 3 damage, which is still the best we currently have I think.
Hmm yes, we can give Acorn Harvest flashback. Although, recurring Dralnu, Lich Lord without Goryo's Vengeance is somewhat problematic; to do it in the megastage, it looks like we need to cast an Acorn Harvest (paying 3 life) without destroying Child of Alara, losing 3 life in the process. Then, we can use a Smite the Monstrous to destroy Dralnu, use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back, and then do the megastage transition again, this time giving Acorn Harvest flashback with Dralnu, and destroying Child of Alara, gaining our 3 life back. So we wind up even - but, that first Acorn Harvest without destroying Child of Alara will allow us to create a lot more Moggcatcher tokens, so we wind up ahead I think. So yeah, it doesn't work.
The idea behind the second Skyshroud Archer was that we would have both on the battlefield, and we would destroy them both, create two tokens, and put Verdant Succession triggers on the stack. Then we would use a Moggcatcher token to create a hyperstage, getting Engineered Explosives back, and destroy Nantuko Tracer, with the Mimic Vat token allowing us to shuffle the Nantuko Tracer and both of the Skyshroud Archers back into the library, and then the Verdant Succession triggers would bring them back. I think that works, although I may be missing something.
Hmm, nice call with Natural Order. Can we make it so we don't need to bring any cards back to our hand? The first problem is all the artifacts that we have. A card that can bring back artifacts from the graveyard or library would be in order here; Arcum Dagsson+ Goryo's Vengeance would work great, except that we can't have that combo along with Izzet Guildmage. So we have to sacrifice one or the other.
One idea I had was Mishra, Artificer Prodigy: we can use its triggers to get our artifacts out of the graveyard, while putting them there with many copies of Pull from Reality after the transition. The problem is that we then don't have a solution for the Centaur Safeguard problem I found. Though, we could solve that with two counters, one for creatures and one for artifacts...
Wait, that won't work. We only get one trigger, so we still won't get access to the artifact. Poop.
Okay, here's a crazy idea that probably goes infinite: Open the Vaults.
The first one resolves, and we Pull from Eternity the Swarm Intelligence, and get it back with Open the Vaults. From there, we have exactly 10 opportunities to pull an artifact/enchantment from exile onto the battlefield, one of which has to grab Pull from Eternity itself, for later use.
We have 8 artifacts we can't get back through Bloodbond March or some other means: Orrery, Mimic Vat, Skull of Orm, Mirrorworks, Simic Signet, Panharmonicon, Salvaging Station, and Spellweaver Helix. That accounts for all but one Pull from Eternity, and I don't think there's any one additional artifact/enchantment we can grab from there that will let us loop. Even if there is, we can just replace Mana Vault with something Salvaging Station can't get, and that should work.
Hmm, that seems very iffy, but maybe it could work.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with Essence Scatter: We have to cast our flashback spells at various levels of our stack, so we don't want to have them stuck on the stack. So we need some other way to deal with the Centaur Safeguard problem.
Oof, you're right. Okay, so let's think. We can either find a way to force us to resolve the non-copy Worldfire, which blanks the life, we can replace Natural Order, or we can find a way to make the gigastage sorcery cost 3 life as well.
The first one seems impossible, and the third seems quite difficult to manage, since the only life-paying flashback spell that's safe now use Acorn Harvest and it's taken. So what else can get Centaur Archer out of our library?
Woodland Bellower? It's okay to be able to repeatedly search out Centaur Safeguard, since we only care about killing it. So we can use a Smite the Monstrous in the next megastage down, use that to bounce Woodland Bellower, and resolve a March/Panharmonicon trigger to get back the safeguard. I don't see any way to take that infinite, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
In any case, assuming both that and the Volute shenanigans work, that brings us to 47 cards by my count, plus 3 for Spasm/our draw spells, and 2 more at least for our dual land and Eureka. That leaves us with 8 cards, some of which will have to go to the setup: we don't have a great way to cast Eureka
Woodland Bellower looks okay; do we have a way to get back our more expensive green creatures?
Another possibility for avoiding the problem is to get rid of Swarm Intelligence. Currently, we need Swarm Intelligence for Rend Spirit and Smite the Monstrous, as a single Righteous Fury will get us plenty of life. We can deal with the former by going back to Metallurgeon / Battle Cry, and we can deal with the latter by adding Copy Enchantment, so we can place a whole bunch of Spellweaver Volutes on Smite the Monstrous. Then, without Swarm Intelligence, only the original Worldfire can get us our gigastage mana.
Rather than Open the Vaults, we could perhaps just have a creature that fetches artifacts from the graveyard. Arcum Dagsson or Muzzio, Visionary Architect? For Muzzio, we would need a way to put artifacts into the library; for Arcum Dagsson, I'm worried that it might go infinite. Same for Daring Archaeologist. (If either is safe, they would eliminate the need for Salvaging Station.) What about Goblin Welder? We would need to use Moggcatcher to bring it back and sacrifice it for a hasted token. So if we were at all worried about getting to many Engineered Explosives in the gigastage, Goblin Welder would certainly solve that problem, as we have to use up a Moggcatcher token for all of our artifacts! (Well, I guess just the ones we need before the gigastage transition, but that's enough.)
Edit: Sorry, Daring Archaeologist is obviously no good since it brings an artifact back to our hand.
Edit: Stakfish, can you describe your alternative methods for making a hyperstage with Rust Tick? It mnight be useful here, as green mana is cheap in this deck.
The simplest form is "creature that can sacrifice to target an artifact"+"cheap instant that can target explicitly that creature". The sacrifice is important, because that way, we can layer it properly to generate one Rust Tick token for every 2 instants cast, which is important. Rend Spirit/Hearth Kami is my go-to, but I've also explored Proliferate and Wickerbough Elder. The problem with that one, which is why I haven't mentioned it before, is that I'm worried it can go infinite alongside Dearly Departed and Moggcatcher, letting us target another thing with Smite the Monstrous. However, all of those options are more expensive than Battle Cry, so if Battle Cry lets us do it, I think that's okay.
For bringing back the artifacts, we could actually run Mishra, Artificer Prodigy and Mirror Gallery. That's two cards, but it definitely will not go infinite. We can use Mimic Vat copies to create tokens of it, and then just resolve down long enough until we have a Guildmage out, use it to pull them back, etc. Sadly, I don't think that lets us cut Salvaging Station, but we can't have it all.
Actually, that Goblin Welder idea has legs. It won't cure the gigastage of its explosives-related ills: we can imprint our artifacts on Mimic Vat, put creation abilities on the stack under the gigastage, and then use Welder activations to get the artifacts back higher up. Fortunately, Worldfire fixes that problem, so a list that looks like:
seems like it should actually work! That gives us 12 cards to work with, 9 if we assume the Reality Spasm/Words of Wisdom/Consecrated Sphinx package goes in. We also need to find some way to generate the mana we need to cast Eureka, which seems.. challenging. Unfortunately, Flash is still unsafe, because we can use two Smite the Monstrous to bounce both Goblin Dark Dwellers and Child of Alara in the megastage, do our preprocessing, play Dark-Dwellers, and use its ability to flash in Child of Alara, letting us gain a lot more life than 3 with each transition.
Actually, we could potentially make Primal Surge work now: since we can only put creatures back in our library, it can't get back any of our artifacts or enchantments, and as a route to go for the Surge will be a lot easier to set up: we don't need to draw the cards. It would also mean no more need for Natural Order, so I'm putting that in our list.
Mix of some good news and bad: Primal Surge breaks any future stages, but Woodland Bellower and Goblin Welder should fix everything: our bigger grean creatures, we can get with Verdant Succession easily enough. That also means we can go back to Swarm Intelligence over Copy Enchantment, which should make the setup easier. Trying it out, I think we're gonna need a dedicated setup card to generate the Mana we need to put our pieces together: I think Tolarian Academy will do, as a way to generate lots of Mana early on, but that isn't repeatable with Rebuild. I'll have a list and tentative start sequence ready soon.
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Edit: One possibility: Driver of the Dead plus Voracious Vampire or Olivia's Bloodsworn.
Edit: I guess we also have to worry about what to do about our green creatures when Worldfire hits.
Edit: While we work on this idea, here's a less ambitious deck using Pulsemage Advocate that I could use a review of:
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 Saprazzan Breaker
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Obelisk of Esper
17 Boros Keyrune
18 Rust Tick
19 Arcum Dagsson
20 Arcum Dagsson
21 Goryo's Vengeance
22 Rebuild
23 Swarm Intelligence
24 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
25 Boggart Mob
26 Pulsemage Advocate
27 Panharmonicon
28 Engineered Explosives
29 Giant Oyster
30 Gangrenous Goliath
31 Reveillark
32 Crushing Vines
33 Thoughtrender Lamia
35 Roar of the Wurm
36 Thoughtweft Gambit
37 Brace for Impact
38 Child of Alara
39 Elvish Spirit Guide
40 Crawling Filth
41 Wormfang Behemoth
42 Vile Redeemer
43 Spellweaver Helix
44 Rude Awakening
45 Worldpurge
46 Acorn Harvest
47 Acorn Harvest
48 Radiant Fountain
49 Glimmerpost
50 Knight of the Reliquary
51 Yavimaya Dryad
52 Breeding Pool
53 Flash
54 Academy Rector
55 Academy Rector
57 Molder
58 Precursor Golem
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
Edit: So, it looks like the deck in post #1695 doesn't quite work, as we can use a cheap Goryo's Vengeance to bring Dralnu, Lich Lord back to the battlefield with haste. Stakfish, do you know another way to make a stage with Rust Tick, without using Goryo's Vengeance or Rend Spirit? Rend Spirit is no good either since we are still using Simian Spirit Guide in the megastage.
Edit: Hmm, I've found another problem: Flash is not good in conjunction with Child of Alara and Worldpurge. After Worldpurge brings Child of Alara back to our hand, we can cast Flash to put it on the battlefield and sacrifice it, getting an additional megstage mana. Not good.
So Channel is out, Genesis Wave is out, Black Lotus is out, and Flash doesn't currently work. Does anyone know of other ways to get started?
In any case, for the Rust Tick problem, I don't see any that don't break with your setup there: most of my alternatives require green mana being plentiful.
Did you see my earlier comment with regards to Firesong and Sunspeaker?
Actually, the deck in post #1695 does have plentiful green mana, so if you mentioned your alternatives whenever you have time, that would be very helpful!
Fastbond doesn't seem that good for the opening hand, since you need two cards to cast it, then each additional land gets you one mana (or two colorless, but there are artifacts that get that as well).
I agree that getting Worldfire to work would be great, and probably has the most potential for damage. Just looking at all options while we are stuck with Smite the Monstrous / Centaur Safeguard / Knight of the Reliquary problems in the Worldfire deck.
In one small bit of good news there, I've figured out a way to get one more run of the card-draw layer: If we arrange the stack so that it's
our creature triggers
our other instants
Switcheroo
The Antiquities War Chapter III
we can run through 3 iterations of the Silent Gravestone combo, enough to get us to 2->3->4->3. Then we can counter our spells, tuck them and draw them with some spare Gravestone draws (not too hard, as long as you stack everything right), play the fourth gravestone, and make it a creature with The Antiquities War Then we hardcast Switcheroo in the main phase, and do two more runs of the draw layer. That brings the total up to 2->3->6->3, which may be the most we can get out of standard, given the fairly short time frame to finish it (I'm hoping to have a write up done, checked, and published before the end of August).
For an alternative, if red mana can be made cheap, Krark-Clan Engineers and Pyretic Ritual will do the trick in two cards.
I still think that Ghitu Chronicler has some potential, even if it doesn't have flash. That just means that it may be harder to get layers above it, but there are still layers below it so it is still pretty good. If we can just turn energy into a comparable amount of life, not even getting any layers off of it, then a red mana will be equivalent to one Silent Gravestone combo, and we can beat 2 -> 3 -> 6 -> 3 if we can get more than five red mana.
I didn't see an easy way to turn energy into life, but the following seems to work: replace Bloodwater Elemental with Dukhara Scavenger, and then add Shielded Air Thief When Slinn Voda bounces Muldrotha, Dukhara Scaveger, and Shielded Air Thief, we can two castings of Teshar, one from putting it into the library and drawing it, the other through Muldrotha. So we wind up gaining life each time we do this, but only at the cost of energy. So this should convert energy into life.
For red mana, there are two Chandras that can add four red mana, which should take us to 2 -> 3 -> 5 -> 3. Then, we can attack with Grand Warlord Radha, taking us to more than 2 -> 3 -> (2 -> 3 -> 5 -> 3) -> 3; finally, we can hit the opponent with a blast spell.
That's an interesting combo with the Scavenger! The problem is that it won't have flash and can't be rebought with Teshar. In past versions we could put that on the bottom, but in the Switcheroo version that's a killer. That said, if we can find some other kind of shenanigans to give it flash, nothing would make me happier than to be able to draw another layer from the "if only Vedlaken Orrery were legal..." drawer, which is at this point getting quite overcrowded.
But, I just realized that an old trick actually works - using Adjani Unyielding to exile a creature and gain lots of life, and using Dynavault Tower to destroy it at the cost of energy. This can only be done at sorcery speed, but that's okay - all we lose are the ability to have many triggers of Ghitu Chronicler on the stack; we can still just draw as many instants and sorceries as we have one time. The layer we lose by not running the combo with triggers on the stack is cancelled out by the extra energy -> life layer. I believe it's the same for Silent Gravestone. So if we have 4 Silent Gravestones and N instants and sorceries in the deck, then we can generate 2 -> 3 -> 4N+1 -> 3 creatures before combat, and then combat takes us to 2 -> 3 -> (2 -> 3 -> 4N+1 -> 3) -> 3.
Edit: Apex of Power and Song of Freyalise look interesting, but unfortunately I think they both go infinite. I think Song of Freyalise would have worked in the previous version, but now we can recur enchantments.
Keeping Switcheroo around is going to be tricky, but now that we only need one sorcery on the stack it's at least somewhat easier. There might be some kind of shenanigans involving Sunbird's Invocation, if we can be careful enough about what goes back in our library.
On a similar note, I've found a new way to improve the setup for the combo, and a small problem: first, Planar Bridge. We can't restock permanents in our library, so it can't interact with our combo, we can activate it for just 15 generic by copying it with Cogwork Assembler and keeping the copy, and because we can easily send it to the graveyard again, it can also serve as the dummy artifact we counter with Unwind, so we can cut Traveler's Amulet.
The small problem is that, since Slinn Voda bounces Thorn Lieutenant and we can only save one opposing creature through the Voda bounce, as we build the stack up we need to spend a life to play Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle before each Swordtooth run, as well as the white Mana to play Seal Away. It doesn't break the combo, because we only have to do it on the initial buildup on the stack and not the layer transitions, but it reduces the effiency of the combo from 2 layers per life to 1. I imagine there's also a workaround with Paladin, but since it won't meaningfully impact our total, I don't know that it's worth overcomplicating it.
Edit: I just found a much bigger problem while doing the write-up: because Slinn Voda bounces the Lieutenant, we need to bring it back each time we're about to spend a white to make Swordtooth triggers, which means each time we do so, we have to cast a Teshar to reanimate it, which means we have to cast a Raff Capashen just before. That means Raff will be on the battlefield when we run out the Swordtooth, and it will die before Slinn Voda. Once Raff dies, we can't continue the combo until the entire stack resolves, if at all, so that's something we need to solve.
Other than indestructible, I thought about increasing Raff's toughness or decreasing Slinn Voda's. I don't know how to damage Slinn Voda or decrease its toughness without being able to kill it. Naru Meha and four Favorable Winds will almost get us there...
Edit: Maybe a second Muldrotha? One to bring back Raff, one to bring back Teshar. No, we'd need a way to bring Muldrotha back from the graveyard.
On a similar note, the combo right now calls for using a Naru Meha, Máster Wizard trigger to copy Demystify when we make the Swordtooth, then immediately play Naru Meha so we can exchange/tap the dinosaur. The same solution works: second Naru Meha, so one pops the Seal Away, one exiles the Swordtooth again. They both wind up in the graveyard, but then we just play Muldrotha, play Slinn Voda, bounce Muldrotha a couple times, and get both Naru Mehas back to hand.
We also need to have Muldrotha out to play Seal Away after destroying it, but it doesn't need to be out the whole time: we can resolve 7 Swordtooth triggers, then play Raff/Muldrotha, Seal Away the dinosaur, let the last trigger kill Slinn Voda, and replay her for bounces.
Because this combo just wasn't convoluted enough to play...
If we try to turn energy into life without needing sorcery speed... we can try to use Shielded Aether Thief, if we can turn card draw into life or white mana, but I don't see how.
Edit: Can we use Djinn of Wishes to put a Switcheroo of the stack after the third part of The Antiquities War resolves? Or is Djinn of Wishes unsafe? It looks like it might be.
Edit: actually, if we can link that with some Aftermath Instants, we might be able to at least get more iterations of 2->x->x->3 than with Gravestone. Though now that I look at the options, the only aftermath instant that doesn't go infinite is Refuse//Cooperate, which seems awfully limited.
Or here's a wild thought: what if we used cycling Instants and Abandoned Sarcophagus? We might be able to get a layer out of casting a cycling instant with it and removing all our copies before the instant resolves. In fact, even if we can't do that, we can play a Sarcophagus, cast a cycling instant, get the energy, spend all that energy, cast another one, get way more energy, repeat until all our cycling Instants are on the stack, then Forsake the Worldly our Sarcophagus. So it's the same limiting factor of "only 4 of the artifact to exile", but instead of one run of the ->3 layer for every copy in the deck, we get a run for every cycling instant we can cram into the deck.
EDIT: hold up, that's a layer on its own! Each time we cast a Sarcophagus, we can put a bajilion Cogwork Assembler triggers copying it on the stack, and then each one lets us replay Forsake the Worldly from our graveyard.
Or no, no that goes infinite. We can resolve one token-maker, then put a bajilion more activations copying it on the stack.
Or does it? We need the original to be on the battlefield or the Assembler won't know what to target, I don't think last-known-information works here. So I guess that doesn't work after all.
One more edit: I haven't gone through with any card links, but I have a very rough draft of a write-up ready. It doesn't take into account anything beyond Silent Gravestone/The Antiquities War, but even if nothing else works I'm pretty sure we'll be able to improve that by cutting as many cards from the setup as possible and switching to max cycling instants and Abandoned Sarcophagus.
http://alex.shankland.org/index.php/2018/06/13/how-to-deal-more-than-grahams-number-damage-in-magic-the-gathering/
I'm not clear on what the purpose would be to have many copies of Abandoned Sarcophagus. Abandoned Sarcophagus doesn't cast the card, it just has a static ability that allows cards with cycling to be played from the graveyard. So I don't see how it keeps up with Silent Gravestone - Silent Gravestone lets us draw a bajillion instants/sorceries, which we can cast for energy, while with Abandoned Sarcophagus it looks like we can cast each card with cycling once, then we have to exile the Abandoned Sarcophagus? How do we get a bajillion instant castings per Sarcophagus?
I was gonna say Run Aground, but I forgot it hits artifacts too. I never thought I would miss Griptide...
Edit: Actually, an interesting question: how would this challenge change, if at all, if it allowed some constant number of additional turns? Or put another way, if we define the function M(n) as the greatest finitely bounded amount of damage which can be dealt in a game of Vintage magic (with no sideboard) on turn n, would that function grow particularly quickly?
Based on the current decks, which wouldn't get much value from the extra turn, it seems like the answer is "no", and that it's actually a fairly slowly-growing function that just has a very high starting value, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.
If Run Aground works to gain life, that would be great! Being able to target artifacts seems okay; we don't need Abandoned Sarcophagus, we can use Ghitu Chronicler to cast many more instants than we could with the Sarcophagus. If we can put four The First Eruptions onto the battlefield the turn before, we can use the eight red mana to get to something like 3 -> 3 -> 9 -> 4, and then we attack with Radha to get to 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 9 -> 4) -> 4.
Yeah, for most of our decks it doesn't much matter if we get extra turns; maybe we could turn that into an extra layer or two. The biggest difference would be if it is tough to get started; for example, in our current gigastage deck, we have precious few card slots, and getting started might cost us a few stages.
Edit: Thinking about the theoretical optimal solution, I imagine the circumstances are the same; being restricted to a few turns just means that you will have to devote a very few number of cards to getting set up. In some unusual circumstances this might cause you to just miss being able to complete a powerful construction, but I think it is more likely that the loss will be minor, e.g. you might miss a few stages.
Of course, this is calling a function "slow-growing" if it gets close to its natural place in the fast-growing hierarchy at low values, but that is not really what slow-growing means. For example, TREE(n) grows at the level of theta(Omega^omega * omega) in the fast-growing hierarchy, and already TREE(3) is roughly in that neighborhood, but people don't normally call TREE(n) slow-growing!
Edit: Speaking of the Vintage challenge, I was thinking about it for a bit. I had the happy thought that perhaps Centaur Safeguard could be retrieved after gigastage transition by resolving down the the next megastage transition and getting to a Verdant Succession trigger; this would not only allow us to take care of retrieving Centaur Safeguard without any further cards, it would also take care of any extra uses of Engineered Explosives we would have from the gigastage transition. Alas, if the only way to kill Centaur Safeguard is by destroying Child of Alara, then the Verdant Succession triggers are going to go above any trigger for putting a Vedalken Orrery token on the battlefield, so we won't be able to restart the megastage without resolving all the Succession triggers. So it doesn't look like that perfect scenario can happen.
So, I didn't think of a nonklutzy way to bring back Centaur Safeguard, so I just added River's Rebuke to the deck; I don't think that will eliminate future creature stages, because when you resolve it it eliminates all creature tokens. We still need to handle extra Engineered Explosives, so I went back to Dralnu, Lich Lord. For the Skyshroud Archer problem, I figured we could add another Skyshroud Archer; then we could use one Explosives to destroy the Archers, and another to destroy Nantuko Tracer, getting two Archers for two Explosives, which should work out correctly. So we have:
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 Pull from Eternity
11 Izzet Guildmage
12 March of the Machines
13 Shriekhorn
14 Nantuko Tracer
15 Allay
16 Skull of Orm
17 Mirrorworks
18 Simic Keyrune
19 Mana Vault
20 Rust Tick
21 Yuki-Onna
22 Rend Spirit
23 Rebuild
24 Swarm Intelligence
25 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
26 Goblin Turncoat
27 Moggcatcher
28 Panharmonicon
29 Engineered Explosives
30 Skyshroud Archer
31 Skyshroud Archer
32 Dearly Departed
33 Abzan Falconer
34 Verdant Succession
36 Acorn Harvest
37 Smite the Monstrous
38 Child of Alara
39 Centaur Safeguard
40 Centaur Safeguard
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Righteous Fury
43 Worldfire
44 River's Rebuke
45 Bump in the Night
46 Bump in the Night
47 Dralnu, Lich Lord
48 Lilliana's Mastery
49 Plateau
50 Titania, Protector of Argoth
51 Replenish
52 Judge of Currents
53 Streambed Aquitects
54 Giant Oyster
55 Grand Architect
57 Minion of Tevesh Szat
58 Reality Spasm
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Words of Wisdom
Edit: A few comments on the article, mostly nit-picky:
The problematic Legion Lieutenant is still on the list.
Early on you say you deal the damage on turn 7, but it looks like it happens on turn 6 this time.
At one point you say "uncounterable number"
One problem with Ghitu Chronicler though: we have to pick all the targets simultaneously, so we can't use each trigger to separately get an instant cast.
That list looks good! A few things:
I think we can swap both Shriekhorn and Cephalid Shrine for Broken Ambitions like in the old stage write-up, saving a card. Similarly, Kiora's Dismissal means we don't need to save Allay in hand, which might even mean we could cut Wormfang Behemoth, since I'm not sure what else we need to keep in hand during the megastage.
I think Dralnu goes infinite there: we can tap it to give Acorn Harvest flashback without paying life, flashback it that way, etc.
You're missing Salvaging Station from the megastage. In fact, all our lists have for a page or so now, I think.
The second Skyshroud Archer doesn't fix the problem: even if it lets us get the first one back, when the second one dies, we won't be able to reshuffle the first one in. What if instead we put in Reclaim over the Tracer? We have to play it while the death trigger for Child is on the stack, which means playing Goblin Dark-Dwellers. After that, we have no way to bounce it, so it dies from Child of Alara/sacrifice, and winds up in our library. We get one natural explosives post-child, but that's not enough to get back Skyshroud Archer: for that, we need to have spent the earlier natural explosives we got to make a lot of Verdant Succession triggers, and that accounts for the second one. So I think that actually works while saving a slot to boot.
If you replace Titania, Protector of Argoth with a nongreen one like Walking Atlas, there's a safer solution to the Worldfire problem: Natural Order. We can use it to search out the second Centaur Safeguard after Worldfire resolves. And if we make sure to leave Skyshroud Archer in the library in the hyperstage just above it, we can do the same for it, and Child of Alara, too.
In fact, as I think about it, if we can make it so we don't really need any cards in our hand the whole time, that will eliminate a lot of problems: there won't be any way to get extra explosives after the gigastage! That would be an absolute coup for us, and make the entire thing much easier to fit together. If we can't save cards in our hand post-gigastage, then I think Eureka becomes safe as a setup card.
Edit: there are a couple solvable problems and one tricker one here. Reclaim can be copied by Izzet Guildmage and we need it to be Dwellers-only, but Bone Harvest seems fine.
By sacrificing Centaur Safeguard to Natural Order, we can gain 3 life after a Worldfire. But the trigger goes on top of the original cast, so if we swap out our countering tool for something that can't hit Worldpurge, like Essence Scatter, we're fine: even if we gain the life that way, it will get blanked by the OG Worldfire cast below it.
The trickier problem is that I missed that we store our artifacts in our hand while Worldfire resolves, so we need a way to get those back. Hmmm.
Broken Ambitions and Kiora's Dismissal look good.
Hmm yes, we can give Acorn Harvest flashback. Although, recurring Dralnu, Lich Lord without Goryo's Vengeance is somewhat problematic; to do it in the megastage, it looks like we need to cast an Acorn Harvest (paying 3 life) without destroying Child of Alara, losing 3 life in the process. Then, we can use a Smite the Monstrous to destroy Dralnu, use a Bloodbond March trigger to bring it back, and then do the megastage transition again, this time giving Acorn Harvest flashback with Dralnu, and destroying Child of Alara, gaining our 3 life back. So we wind up even - but, that first Acorn Harvest without destroying Child of Alara will allow us to create a lot more Moggcatcher tokens, so we wind up ahead I think. So yeah, it doesn't work.
Oh right, Salvaging Station.
The idea behind the second Skyshroud Archer was that we would have both on the battlefield, and we would destroy them both, create two tokens, and put Verdant Succession triggers on the stack. Then we would use a Moggcatcher token to create a hyperstage, getting Engineered Explosives back, and destroy Nantuko Tracer, with the Mimic Vat token allowing us to shuffle the Nantuko Tracer and both of the Skyshroud Archers back into the library, and then the Verdant Succession triggers would bring them back. I think that works, although I may be missing something.
Reclaim is a good idea, but to prevent us from using Mirror of Fate to put our cards back in the library, we added Izzet Guildmage and Pull from Eternity, so we can also cast Reclaim cheaply.
Hmm, nice call with Natural Order. Can we make it so we don't need to bring any cards back to our hand? The first problem is all the artifacts that we have. A card that can bring back artifacts from the graveyard or library would be in order here; Arcum Dagsson+ Goryo's Vengeance would work great, except that we can't have that combo along with Izzet Guildmage. So we have to sacrifice one or the other.
Other than that... we have Horobi, Death's Wail and Yuki-Onna. Switching to Goryo's Vengeance would take care of those as well. Then we have Moggcatcher and Abzan Falconer. Can we set up Bloodbond March triggers in preparation for the gigastage transition? I don't see why not.
So it looks like this almost works, except that we can't have both the Arcum Dagsson / Goryo's Vengeance combo to make sure that we can bring back everything, and also the Izzet Guildmage / Pull from Eternity combo so that we can use Nantuko Tracer or Reclaim to soak up our uses of Engineered Explosives in the megastage transition. I think we're close, though.
Wait, that won't work. We only get one trigger, so we still won't get access to the artifact. Poop.
Okay, here's a crazy idea that probably goes infinite: Open the Vaults.
Before we start the gigastage transition, we put Spellweaver Volute on Pull from Eternity. We put all the Sorceries on Helix: Eureka, Acorn Harvest, Worldfire, Righteous Fury, Open the Vaults, and Natural Order all get cast simultaneously, giving us 6 triggers of Volute, plus all our Swarm Intelligence triggers. At the bottom of that batch of things, we put a Worldfire copy, followed by alternating Volute/Open the Vaults copies for all 6 Volute triggers.
The first one resolves, and we Pull from Eternity the Swarm Intelligence, and get it back with Open the Vaults. From there, we have exactly 10 opportunities to pull an artifact/enchantment from exile onto the battlefield, one of which has to grab Pull from Eternity itself, for later use.
We have 8 artifacts we can't get back through Bloodbond March or some other means: Orrery, Mimic Vat, Skull of Orm, Mirrorworks, Simic Signet, Panharmonicon, Salvaging Station, and Spellweaver Helix. That accounts for all but one Pull from Eternity, and I don't think there's any one additional artifact/enchantment we can grab from there that will let us loop. Even if there is, we can just replace Mana Vault with something Salvaging Station can't get, and that should work.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with Essence Scatter: We have to cast our flashback spells at various levels of our stack, so we don't want to have them stuck on the stack. So we need some other way to deal with the Centaur Safeguard problem.
The first one seems impossible, and the third seems quite difficult to manage, since the only life-paying flashback spell that's safe now use Acorn Harvest and it's taken. So what else can get Centaur Archer out of our library?
Woodland Bellower? It's okay to be able to repeatedly search out Centaur Safeguard, since we only care about killing it. So we can use a Smite the Monstrous in the next megastage down, use that to bounce Woodland Bellower, and resolve a March/Panharmonicon trigger to get back the safeguard. I don't see any way to take that infinite, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
In any case, assuming both that and the Volute shenanigans work, that brings us to 47 cards by my count, plus 3 for Spasm/our draw spells, and 2 more at least for our dual land and Eureka. That leaves us with 8 cards, some of which will have to go to the setup: we don't have a great way to cast Eureka
Another possibility for avoiding the problem is to get rid of Swarm Intelligence. Currently, we need Swarm Intelligence for Rend Spirit and Smite the Monstrous, as a single Righteous Fury will get us plenty of life. We can deal with the former by going back to Metallurgeon / Battle Cry, and we can deal with the latter by adding Copy Enchantment, so we can place a whole bunch of Spellweaver Volutes on Smite the Monstrous. Then, without Swarm Intelligence, only the original Worldfire can get us our gigastage mana.
Rather than Open the Vaults, we could perhaps just have a creature that fetches artifacts from the graveyard. Arcum Dagsson or Muzzio, Visionary Architect? For Muzzio, we would need a way to put artifacts into the library; for Arcum Dagsson, I'm worried that it might go infinite. Same for Daring Archaeologist. (If either is safe, they would eliminate the need for Salvaging Station.) What about Goblin Welder? We would need to use Moggcatcher to bring it back and sacrifice it for a hasted token. So if we were at all worried about getting to many Engineered Explosives in the gigastage, Goblin Welder would certainly solve that problem, as we have to use up a Moggcatcher token for all of our artifacts! (Well, I guess just the ones we need before the gigastage transition, but that's enough.)
Edit: Sorry, Daring Archaeologist is obviously no good since it brings an artifact back to our hand.
Edit: Stakfish, can you describe your alternative methods for making a hyperstage with Rust Tick? It mnight be useful here, as green mana is cheap in this deck.
The simplest form is "creature that can sacrifice to target an artifact"+"cheap instant that can target explicitly that creature". The sacrifice is important, because that way, we can layer it properly to generate one Rust Tick token for every 2 instants cast, which is important. Rend Spirit/Hearth Kami is my go-to, but I've also explored Proliferate and Wickerbough Elder. The problem with that one, which is why I haven't mentioned it before, is that I'm worried it can go infinite alongside Dearly Departed and Moggcatcher, letting us target another thing with Smite the Monstrous. However, all of those options are more expensive than Battle Cry, so if Battle Cry lets us do it, I think that's okay.
For bringing back the artifacts, we could actually run Mishra, Artificer Prodigy and Mirror Gallery. That's two cards, but it definitely will not go infinite. We can use Mimic Vat copies to create tokens of it, and then just resolve down long enough until we have a Guildmage out, use it to pull them back, etc. Sadly, I don't think that lets us cut Salvaging Station, but we can't have it all.
Actually, that Goblin Welder idea has legs. It won't cure the gigastage of its explosives-related ills: we can imprint our artifacts on Mimic Vat, put creation abilities on the stack under the gigastage, and then use Welder activations to get the artifacts back higher up. Fortunately, Worldfire fixes that problem, so a list that looks like:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Broken Ambitions
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Pull from Eternity
11 March of the Machines
12 Izzet Guildmage
13 Kiora's Dismissal
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Signet
18 Copy Enchantment
20 Battle Cry
21 Rebuild
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Moggcatcher
24 Goblin Turncoat
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Salvaging Station
28 Skyshroud Archer
29 Verdant Succession
30 Dearly Departed
31 Abzan Falconer
32 Bone Harvest
33 Spellweaver Volute
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Smite the Monstrous
36 Child of Alara
37 Centaur Safeguard
38 Centaur Safeguard
40 Righteous Fury
41 Worldfire
42 Spider Spawning
43 Spider Spawning
44 Walking Atlas
45 Primal Surge
46 Goblin Welder
47 Bayou
seems like it should actually work! That gives us 12 cards to work with, 9 if we assume the Reality Spasm/Words of Wisdom/Consecrated Sphinx package goes in. We also need to find some way to generate the mana we need to cast Eureka, which seems.. challenging. Unfortunately, Flash is still unsafe, because we can use two Smite the Monstrous to bounce both Goblin Dark Dwellers and Child of Alara in the megastage, do our preprocessing, play Dark-Dwellers, and use its ability to flash in Child of Alara, letting us gain a lot more life than 3 with each transition.
Actually, we could potentially make Primal Surge work now: since we can only put creatures back in our library, it can't get back any of our artifacts or enchantments, and as a route to go for the Surge will be a lot easier to set up: we don't need to draw the cards. It would also mean no more need for Natural Order, so I'm putting that in our list.