I was simplifying a bit; after we cast a Wrath Nova, we can resolve one to kill off Citywatch Sphinx and reshuffle the deck. So after every two castings of Cleansing Nova, we should be able to reshuffle and get them back in the library.
I'm not saying that we get more than four white mana from just resolving many Purify Novas in a row. In fact, that's what we have to guard against, since that would allow us to gain white mana overall, and that would go infinite. What we want to happen is that, as we resolve down the stack of alternating groups of Cleansing Novas, we gain white mana each time we resolve down a group. The amount we have in reserve should be exactly enough to build back up the alternating groups up to the same number we have at the start. (Counting Gaea's Blessing draws as a future alternating group)
I don't see what the issue is with Quasiduplicating the Sphinx. The lockets have to be destroyed with a Purify Nova, and to get them back we need an Elephant, which gets stuck on the battlefield until we cast a Wrath Nova. So that's what is controlling the recycling of the artifacts. I think in this latest version, we are okay with frequent reshuffling, although we don't want to be able to reshuffle just by resolving a cheap instant/sorcery, since that could reshuffle that instant/sorcery back to the top of the library again.
Edit: Well, we do not really want too frequent reshuffling, lest we get the Quasiduplicate back too easily. It seems to work fine the way it is right now. It might be nice to change the reshuffling to scale back to one Cleansing Nova I suppose.
As for a better reshuffler I think the Mending of Dominaria works with just one Nova. We can save it from the second nova and reshuffle after we cast and counter wrath. Though we do have to be careful with where the lockets are. (I think we need to resolve an extra purify copy down each time to put them in the yard after a reshuffle). So that looks like it saves a card slot.
Golgari Findbroker+quasiduplicate is still a problem with the Mending, as we can wrath. Make a bunch of poets, purify, Use the poets to get back our enchantments, Reshuffle. (purify again and mill the Mox instead of reshuffling). Findbroker the mox. make white. Resolve a purify, Quasiduplicate Findbroker. get the mox. etc.
I'd really like to be able to cut down to one artifact and cut naban and AA too, but I'm not seeing a way. I'm pretty sure it has to be a creature's cast trigger to work properly with wrath and not be quasiduplicate able.
J_Kibbs,
One way to look at it is that we net one W mana every time we change which nova type we just resolved, and it doesn't matter which order its in. or if non nova stuff happens in between.
So as we cast our novas we resolve the top two as we spend our white. (leaving behind many other copies of the same nova)
So the resolved effects are like ...WW PP WW PP WW PP...
Which we can use as ...(W P)(P W)(W P)(P W)(W P)...
to regain one white mana per pair.
However each Nova costs 2 white, so we eventually run out and have to start resolving down the stack
Resolving lots of the same type doesn't give us any mana, but we left a lot of the other type right below it on the stack.
Lets say the top of the stack is purifies.
Then we can use the last purify of that batch with the top Wrath, and the next wrath with a re-casted purify to go even on white mana.
When the tower is nearly finished it looks like WWPPWWPPWWPP. With exactly 2 of each in a layer.
Where we can resolve those down just like we did when casting them to net 1 mana each transition. Then we can rebuild. but because there are fewer transitions than novas we don't go infinite.
Wait, you mention why Findbroker + Quasiduplicate is a problem with The Mending, what about without The Mending? If we can only reshuffle when we resolve a Wrath Nova, I think it should be fine.
Well with the sphinx as our reshuffler, we can quasiduplicate it and get a bunch of reshuffles each wrath. so we can have hasty poets and quasiduplicate in the deck after a purify. Allowing us to copy the findbroker to make more mana.
Hmmm. What about using The Mending of Dominaria as our reshuffler rather than Gaea's Blessing, and using Martyr for the Cause to proliferate? But no, I guess we can get multiple copies of Martyr for the Cause, then resolve a Wrath Nova; that gets us a lot of proliferate triggers, and we can resolve a couple to send TMoD to step 3 and reshuffle the graveyard into the library. Then we can cast Adventurous Impulse and fetch Tragic Poet, cast it, cast Quasiduplicate to get many copies, sacrifice one Tragic Poet to bring TMoD to our hand, recast TMoD, and then proliferate again the reshuffle again. That allows us to have Quasiduplicate in our library. Oh well.
Yeah, we need a cast trigger to return an artifact, and Excavation Elephant is the only option I can see.
Edit:
Where else can we look for improvements?
I Warlord's Fury is still not safe.
I keep on wanting to be able to more profitably use the sphynx's reshuffle triggers, because we get to make so many of them thanks to quasiduplicate. But everything goes infinite or fizzles out too fast. And we are so restricted on card types.
Deedlit11: can you confirm if Sanctum of the sun is worse than two mountains? I think it is but I'm not 100% sure.
I'm still not convinced that there can't be a solution, but I don't know one at the moment.
I'm wondering now if we can do a similar thing with Angrath's Rampage. Unfortunately, using Excavation Elephant will moot white mana, which is bad. I'm kind of hoping that we can make a combo work so that we need to fetch an artifact twice, and have Golgari Findbroker and Quasiduplicate be the two ways that we fetch it. Otherwise, we will have to go without Quasiduplicate, and that will probably be worse than the Cleansing Nova combo.
Let's start with the Cleansing Nova combo first. As we established, we have to cast Tragic Poet and Quasiduplicate prior to resolving a Purify Nova. After the Purify Nova, we can cast Golgari Findbroker, and return either Mox Amber or the Millstone. Let's return the Millstone, since that is what gets us the reshuffle so that we can cast Quasiduplicate. So we reshuffle, and cast Quasiduplicate to fetch the Mox Amber. So we are out of artifact retrieval after one Mox Amber. So that looks good so far.
Hmm, but what if we reshuffle, and then resolve the next Purify Nova? That puts Millstone back in the graveyard. So we can now cast Quasiduplicate, and bring back both Mox Amber and Millstone. We can tap the Mox Amber for a white mana, and then tap the Millstone to reshuffle. It looks like we can keep reshuffling and refetching this way. Too bad.
So I think I understand why the staging process works(I’m still a bit shaky on the details of the working structure but if what I’m about to say makes sense then I hopefully can wrap my head around it at some point).
Ok this is an attempt to explain it to myself so hopefully this is followable to others.
So if I think of the whole thing as a latched together unit I see 4 major components 1) our draws(main), and 2-4) sub structures 1-3 allowing either casting novas or making mana.
Now each time we drop down in a structure layer we lose the ability to make 1 white mana.
So our main structure(using draws) can get us to 4, sub1 can make 3, sub2 makes 2, and sub3 makes 1(we can technically go to sub4 but we lose any ability at all to make white mana, after all in our current build we need 1 white at least to make any additional).
So we can’t change the sub level of an action but we can change the size result(thanks to TYS). We do need to resolve all of the lowest sub level before we can resolve any above it, but we can make more layers below if it doesn’t destroy the entire thing(going to sub4). So if we are sitting at sub2 and can make sub3 and this should be fine from a non infinite stand point.
Now I could be completely wrong in tying white mana production to the sub levels, but I see something interesting here in this that lines up with how stages end up increasing our layers when we look at the math. Our 3 sub levels lined up well with taking x->x^^^x to generate a layers worth of growth ...
Also I think something I was getting stuck on was why we can start and get to 4 mana. The thing is that we did use up draws to get to that point, they just happen to come during the resolution of emergency powers. This means we can’t make 4 mana without using draws. This stipulation is what keeps us in check. Our ability to make some white mana(but not too much) is what allows us to keep doing interesting non infinite things underneath this proverbial barrier. TYS is what allows us to grow in this environment and not just make loops of non changing lengths. Another interesting note is we can get past 4 white mana. We just do it at the start before we start stage building. The beauty of the stage is that as soon as we move from our main structure into sub1 we don’t drop from x to x-1 in mana production. We drop to maxing out at making(recouping is probably a better word here) 3 no matter how much we have going into it. So we could use up a bunch of draws before making any stage stuff and “bank” a bunch of mana. Then start building our stage. We would could do what seemed like infinite things but they wouldn’t because we could only ever get back 3 of what we spent, and would eventually need to go use up some resources to do more cool stuff.
So in short we can go down through the sub levels easily, but can only go up by resolving the full sub level we are on. Then we might be able to go back down again but we’d use up a resource from our current(or above) layer to do that. Main can repopulate 1, 1–>2, 2->3, but non can go the other way.
We need everything describe above to work exactly(and only) this way or things completely stop working or we cross into unbound loop territory. I can see why it’s so important(and difficult) to have the processes within a stage work in a very specific fashion. I’m still trying to fully get it but I think I’m kinda piecing it together. I usually work big picture->small details when trying to understand things, so even knowing the “rules” for the stages leaves me still a bit perplexed. But I am still trying to get it.
@FortyTwo: As for where else we can look for further improvements, I would imagine there are probably more ways to get further layers. But I don't have a good sense of where is best to look. I don't see any obvious resources that are still unused; we've used all our colors of mana, and we don't have anything in Standard that requires colorless. Life has been used. Opponent life and library is hard to make use of. There is always the possiblity of getting more layers in our transitions; for example, we tried pretty hard to get another layer in the red mana to life transition, but ultimately we couldn't make it work. Teysa Karlov does seem like a potential avenue for an extra layer, but it's hard due to the fact that we have Cleansing Nova further down. Same with Naban, Dean of Iteration. Looking at some of our past layer decks, we got many layers using creatures, or from instants/sorceries that could fetch other spells from the graveyard/library. But, our current stage already gets us access to creatures and instants/sorceries. There is the possibility of remaking the stage to leave more room later on, but we need a good idea for me to get particularly enthusiastic about that.
We could be more ambitious and look for a further stage. We have already thought somewhat about adding a Angrath's Rampage stage; I suppose there is still a possibility it could work. Otherwise, we have to think more outside the box. All I really know is that at least one of our alternating groups has to be an instant/sorcery to make use of Thousand-Year Storm, or a triggered ability from many creatures created by Quasiduplicate or Replicate.
As for Sanctum of the Sun, I agree that it is better to have two Mountains instead.
@J_kibbs: Unfortunately, I don't really follow what you are saying, such as the part about sub levels. So I can't say for sure whether you are getting it or not.
@J_Kibbs:
I'm not following you either. We are making a lot more than 4 white mana.
Sure we could sacrifice the locket to draw cards, but what are we drawing? Novas? But we can just cast them for that 4 white and still have our untapped locket.
Edit:
@Deedlit:
Hmm, is Flood of Recollection+Bolt Bend a possible warlord's fury replacement? we still have to counter the flood with ionize, but now we wouldn't have to counter Gaea's Blessing.
*sigh*, yeah, something just ins't clicking for me then .... i think i conceptually actually get it. it's a self recursive structure that limits it's own self access to various fundamental things(mana, card zone location, etc) to keep itself growing but not going infinite. i even get that we need to at some point construct our ppwppwppwppw structure by layering and resolving ever deeper towers of P's and W's. then once we have the ppwppwppwppw fully "built" we resolve up(or down?) through it and it(our constructed, layered, structure) in turn further builds out each layer but this time we have a more optimized structure to do it within ..... i think? idk maybe i'm wrong here too
so u guys have been great at doing your best to explain this to me and for some reason i just can't get a+b=c to actually make sense. i really want this to click because i find all the math/concepts going on super interesting and as someone who likes brewing decks this is just another tool at my disposal to consider.
so if the ppwpppwppwppwppw... structure is where we max out at we need to build these within our blessing draw tower ... i think this is true? obviously the ppwppwppw... we build on our last draw will be our largest, but even building it in the first place is something i'm just not fully grasping. so, and i know this is a lot to ask, could we(probably just me but maybe other lurkers would enjoy this) see a small stage fully built(and explained along the way)? we can simplify the numbers greatly just to allow a size that can be fully written out. if it is being built using up a draw to start then a small tower of W or P is where we will start. so maybe something like a P tower of 4 or 6 P(2 or 3 layers of P to work with) along with our blue plus green ins/sor upping our storm count by 2-3 per W resolution(and our castings of nova will also add to storm count)?
conceptually i think it would be super helpful to see this end of it. yes, you guys have explained stage building before, but when we start with N, X, and Y(etc) for our numbers it can be a bit tough to follow if the math isn't super intuitive. i know the stages are meant to take inputs and go very large very quickly but if we start small enough hopefully people can follow along and get the gist of things before the numbers get too large to keep track of.
the stage aspect of these challenges is the biggest key to getting to super super large numbers. layers are a good start but are child's play when compared to anything involving a stage. having an understanding of the particular mechanics of stages is needed before anyone can even understand what is going on at all, in this or the vintage challenge, so i think having a really simplified, or fully written out, stage example could be extremely helpful to those interested in helping but can't because they are just way over their heads(like me for example lol) conceptually.
@FortyTwo: Flood of Recollection plus Bolt Bend is interesting, but I don't think it helps. I assume the idea is to cast Flood of Recollection and counter it with Ionize, and then use all of the copies to retrieve Gaea's Blessing, and then cast Gaea's Blessing to draw a bunch of Cleansing Novas. The problem is, then Gaea's Blessing will be on the stack during stage resolution, and we won't be able to use it to reshuffle the deck. If we add another Gaea's Blessing or another card that can reshuffle the deck, then we can cast Gaea's Blessing to draw a lot of cards while still being able to reshuffle the deck, so that goes infinite.
@J_kibbs: Okay, I will try to explain a small example. Not now though.
Ok, so here's what happens when we start with lets say 5 white mana after tapping the lockets:
I'll be using the 2 nova+sphynx version as opposed to the slightly more optimal version with TMoD. The overall structure is the same but I dont want to get bogged down in the reshuffles.
For clarity we can also assume that the originals of all of our creatures have been made indestructible by Gideon (except for Excavation Elephant, Spark Double, and Nikya). I'm also going to ignore countering the original novas, because that would inflate the storm count and this gets big enough already.
Starting position: Empty stack, Elephant in hand, Tapped lockets, four white mana floating, novas on top of deck, about a dozen token copies of tragic poet and Citywatch Sphinx in play.
Our output is storm count and it starts at lets say 5.
Every time we resolve a wrath we get a reshuffle trigger for each sphinx, we use these to make more copies of our creatures with Quasiduplicate. (and return elephant to hand if it isn't there already) {We can also dump the lockets in the yard if they get reshuffled.}
Every time we resolve a purify we rebuild our enchantments with tragic poet tokens.
Every time we cast a nova, we counter just the original with disdainful stroke.
So we have WWWWW after taping the lockets, we need to resolve a purify to tap them again.
We cast Purify and put X copies on the stack. (WWW)
We let one resolve, and cast Elephant to return the lockets, tapping them (WWWW)
we let the next Purify resolve.
Position 1
Now we cast wrath and get X+1 copies (WW) {Optimally, we do some stuff in response to the TYS trigger}
So the stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWWWW :top)
We resolve the top wrath to kill our elephant (and increase storm count)
Now we can return the lockets and tap them (WWW)
Resolve another wrath (make many copies of poet in preparation for the purifies)
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWW :top) and we have (WWW) {Position 2}
Cast Purify and put X copies on the stack. (W)
Resolve one of the purifies.
Use elephant to return the lockets (WW) *note: we briefly hit 0 W so we can't go further than this and still be able to kick the elephant.
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWWP^x :top)
Now we have a bunch of purifies to resolve but the elephant is stuck in play,
Each purify doesn't really do anything for us to progress. (I chose 5 starting white just so this was not profitable, with 6 our top batch is wraths)
We don't even rebuild after each one.
But we eventually resolve the last purify, and then we use the poets we made earlier to rebuild.
So the stack is (bottom: PPPWWWW:top)
Now we can finally kill the elephant and return the lockets (WWW)
Resolve another wrath
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWW :top) and we have (WWW)
This is exactly the same position as 2 above but with fewer wraths on the stack. (and more storm count)
So we do everything from there again to get here but now the stack is just the bottom purifies and we just resolved a wrath.
Here we resolve one of the bottom purifies, to kill the lockets
Then we return them with the Elephant. (WWWW)
We resolve one more purify
Now we are at position 1 but with only one purify on the stack.
We redo everything from there (including more 2 loops because there are many more wraths in a row now)
When we run out of purifies at the bottom we are at the same starting position but with less mana.
Edit: Deedlit11: good point, we'd still need to ionize the gaea's blessing and still be bottlenecked by life there.
[quote from="FortyTwo »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/808162-most-damage-without-going-infinite-standard?comment=187"]@J_Kibbs:
I'm not following you either. We are making a lot more than 4 white mana.
Sure we could sacrifice the locket to draw cards, but what are we drawing? Novas? But we can just cast them for that 4 white and still have our untapped locket.
but if we can do this we use up a draw and can make more draws? isn't this infinite as we can simply rebuild a mini draw tower inside our ppwppwppw structure?
so we would get this:
last
blessing tower draw
stage construct
locket draws
first
with this structure what's stopping us from making another stage structure inside our locket draws? and then stages and then lockets again and again?
Sure we could make the stage from the locket draws, but it'd be a stage that's down 5 white mana instead of 4 to cast the two novas. (the drawing locket could've been tapped for mana instead)
Drawing is not as efficient of a way to use our white mana.
Each gaea's blessing card drawn is a nova so the card draws are worth two white mana.
If the lockets could be sacced for less mana then we would have a problem. (well, 1 less is fine because it breaks even, but 2 less does break it.)
i get that a draw = ww(it also is worth r in the case of ionize), but if we can make more than 4 white inside our tower structure we can simply build stages inside of stages. staying at or under 4(5 might be ok too) keeps that from happening . if when it was said " we make a lot more than 4 white mana" it meant over time and we never have more than 4 at any one time inside the tower(s), then that is fine, but i took it as actuallty netting mana to get to 5,6, ... ,N white mana saved up. to start this process all we need is wwww and 1 draw. this means if we can get to draws(from lockets) and excess white mana inside the structure we can rebuild that structure again inside of the current one and we will go infinite.
I don't know what you mean by "stages inside of stages". A stage here is a sequence of alternating groups of Wrath Novas and Purify Novas. If we had a stage inside a stage, it would just form one bigger stage. So, do you mean it is possible to extend the stage infinitely? You need to describe how that happens in more detail.
I don't understand the concept that having more than four white mana will go infinite. Each Cleansing Nova costs two white mana to cast, but you get one back from the lockets. So four white mana will get you three alternating groups, I think. Four white mana and a draw would get us four alternating groups. So yeah, if we could generate four white mana for free, then we would go infinite. But we can't generate four white mana for free. We have to resolve down three alternating groups, plus a couple of Cleansing Novas from the next alternating group down, to gain the white mana we need to build back up three alternating groups. So we can only build back up as much as we resolved down, and doing so takes away Cleansing Novas from the next group down, so it can't go infinite.
So if post 190 is the correct workings of a stage then everything checks out no problem. I don’t see how u go above 4 white mana tho without using draws(which is good thing btw, I’m pretty sure it goes infi otherwise).
I’m skeptical 190 is a stage tho because of post 170(4th paragraph). It seems that post 190 structure is only worth x^y which shouldn’t be a stage(quasi loops on Sphinx triggers maybe gets us to x^^y), unless I am missing something. Also paragraph 5 talks about somehow extending the whole thing anyway, and this is where I get tripped up because 1) I don’t see how it’s possible at all anyway, and 2) if it is and does it by going beyond 4 white mana I’m worried we can recreate scenario zero(edit: starting position) from post 190 while still inside our tower. If we can get back to scenario zero while still inside a tower it might be just efficient enough to make it go infinite another way.
If we can create series of plays that gives us wwww while we have lockets and elephants in hand and we are still in our towers, we can just restart back at scenario zero and go infinite. Regardless of how we get here, if it’s possible, in any way(as long as we are still in our towers), we go infinite.
Currently in the 190 structure we cannot recreate scenario zero without going up to our blessing tower draw, which stops the infinite.
So if to get to wwww floating with lockets and elephants in hand we need to go through N scenarios inside a tower, the most optimum(and infinite) line of play would be this if looking at the progression of those scenarios:
There is no need to build a stage at this point as optimum play is unbound/infinite without it. There is also no need to leave the tower at all. We just make infinite storm right here.
J_kibbs, you keep talking about how getting to four white mana goes infinite, presumably by sacrificing a locket for four mana to get a card draw, but you haven't yet answered FortyTwo's question on how it is in any way better to sacrifice a locket to draw a Cleansing Nova then cast it for free, than to just pay two white mana to cast Cleansing Nova from the graveyard.
Scenario 1:
Cleansing Nova is at the top of the library, and a locket is on the battlefield untapped. We tap the locket for one white mana, and spend two mana to cast Cleansing Nova from the library.
Net mana change: -1 white mana
Scenario 2:
Cleansing Nova is at the top of the library, and a locket is on the battlefield untapped. We spend for white mana and sacrifice the locket to draw Cleansing Nova, and then cast it for free.
Net mana change: -4 white mana
Now, how in the world can scenario 2 lead to an infinite loop, if scenario 1 doesn't?
You are going to have to be more specific, you can't just keep saying that 5 or more white goes infinite, without providing an actual line. At least answer what you are planning on drawing with the locket?
Again using WWWW and saccing a locket to draw two novas is more expensive than casting the novas off the top.
Having enough white mana would allow us to make draws inside the tower. This removes the need to ever leave the tower. We just loop whatever actions we did to make the white mana, sac a locket, create draws and use those to get back to starting position. Now we restart from staring position with a higher storm count, and repeat. We need a high enough storm count to loop whatever actions those may be, but considering how fast that grows it should happen even if we need to use up a few draws to make non looping towers to then have enough to turn the corner and just have it.
I am voicing concern to the statement “we make a lot more than 4 white” that’s all I’m doing. I have zero idea how U think u do without using draws. The structure in 190 will not ever gain mana in its shown processes, and as I said it checks out fine. Your structure in 190 is the same structure deed was responding to me with in post 170. Deed clearly states there’s more to it than that in paragraph 5. I’m wondering what he’s talking about, and how it’s done.
I’m just showing concern with a blanket statement I might be misunderstanding. I can’t show u how to loop and make mana because I don’t think it’s possible in the first place. But if u say u can I’m showing why it is an issue.
FWIW so far I haven’t seen a process that does it. 190 does not net mana, unless it goes up to the draw tower to do it.
I want to be wrong here. I want 190 to be a stage. If it is that’s great. I’m just seeing conflicting statements that have me asking what is what. Just trying to figure out what is going on is all.
The actions that give us white mana are the resolution of the tower. Notice that we started with 5 mana.
If the structure in 190 started with 100 mana the recursive loops would go about 100 layers deep (98) and each one loops for each storm count we have while also increasing that count.
After resolving all of those loops, we'd have 99 mana and if we have a draw on top of the stack now, we can use that as the nova type we need and then redo the whole 100 mana combo for each of those wraths.
Once we finally run out of draws we can make smaller and smaller towers to efficiently use our white to max the storm count until we finally run out.
So the next casting of Gaea's blessing gives even more copies.
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I'm not saying that we get more than four white mana from just resolving many Purify Novas in a row. In fact, that's what we have to guard against, since that would allow us to gain white mana overall, and that would go infinite. What we want to happen is that, as we resolve down the stack of alternating groups of Cleansing Novas, we gain white mana each time we resolve down a group. The amount we have in reserve should be exactly enough to build back up the alternating groups up to the same number we have at the start. (Counting Gaea's Blessing draws as a future alternating group)
I don't see what the issue is with Quasiduplicating the Sphinx. The lockets have to be destroyed with a Purify Nova, and to get them back we need an Elephant, which gets stuck on the battlefield until we cast a Wrath Nova. So that's what is controlling the recycling of the artifacts. I think in this latest version, we are okay with frequent reshuffling, although we don't want to be able to reshuffle just by resolving a cheap instant/sorcery, since that could reshuffle that instant/sorcery back to the top of the library again.
Edit: Well, we do not really want too frequent reshuffling, lest we get the Quasiduplicate back too easily. It seems to work fine the way it is right now. It might be nice to change the reshuffling to scale back to one Cleansing Nova I suppose.
Golgari Findbroker+quasiduplicate is still a problem with the Mending, as we can wrath. Make a bunch of poets, purify, Use the poets to get back our enchantments, Reshuffle. (purify again and mill the Mox instead of reshuffling). Findbroker the mox. make white. Resolve a purify, Quasiduplicate Findbroker. get the mox. etc.
I'd really like to be able to cut down to one artifact and cut naban and AA too, but I'm not seeing a way. I'm pretty sure it has to be a creature's cast trigger to work properly with wrath and not be quasiduplicate able.
J_Kibbs,
One way to look at it is that we net one W mana every time we change which nova type we just resolved, and it doesn't matter which order its in. or if non nova stuff happens in between.
So as we cast our novas we resolve the top two as we spend our white. (leaving behind many other copies of the same nova)
So the resolved effects are like ...WW PP WW PP WW PP...
Which we can use as ...(W P)(P W)(W P)(P W)(W P)...
to regain one white mana per pair.
However each Nova costs 2 white, so we eventually run out and have to start resolving down the stack
Resolving lots of the same type doesn't give us any mana, but we left a lot of the other type right below it on the stack.
Lets say the top of the stack is purifies.
Then we can use the last purify of that batch with the top Wrath, and the next wrath with a re-casted purify to go even on white mana.
When the tower is nearly finished it looks like WWPPWWPPWWPP. With exactly 2 of each in a layer.
Where we can resolve those down just like we did when casting them to net 1 mana each transition. Then we can rebuild. but because there are fewer transitions than novas we don't go infinite.
Edit:
Where else can we look for improvements?
I Warlord's Fury is still not safe.
I keep on wanting to be able to more profitably use the sphynx's reshuffle triggers, because we get to make so many of them thanks to quasiduplicate. But everything goes infinite or fizzles out too fast. And we are so restricted on card types.
Deedlit11: can you confirm if Sanctum of the sun is worse than two mountains? I think it is but I'm not 100% sure.
I'm wondering now if we can do a similar thing with Angrath's Rampage. Unfortunately, using Excavation Elephant will moot white mana, which is bad. I'm kind of hoping that we can make a combo work so that we need to fetch an artifact twice, and have Golgari Findbroker and Quasiduplicate be the two ways that we fetch it. Otherwise, we will have to go without Quasiduplicate, and that will probably be worse than the Cleansing Nova combo.
Let's start with the Cleansing Nova combo first. As we established, we have to cast Tragic Poet and Quasiduplicate prior to resolving a Purify Nova. After the Purify Nova, we can cast Golgari Findbroker, and return either Mox Amber or the Millstone. Let's return the Millstone, since that is what gets us the reshuffle so that we can cast Quasiduplicate. So we reshuffle, and cast Quasiduplicate to fetch the Mox Amber. So we are out of artifact retrieval after one Mox Amber. So that looks good so far.
Hmm, but what if we reshuffle, and then resolve the next Purify Nova? That puts Millstone back in the graveyard. So we can now cast Quasiduplicate, and bring back both Mox Amber and Millstone. We can tap the Mox Amber for a white mana, and then tap the Millstone to reshuffle. It looks like we can keep reshuffling and refetching this way. Too bad.
Ok this is an attempt to explain it to myself so hopefully this is followable to others.
So if I think of the whole thing as a latched together unit I see 4 major components 1) our draws(main), and 2-4) sub structures 1-3 allowing either casting novas or making mana.
Now each time we drop down in a structure layer we lose the ability to make 1 white mana.
So our main structure(using draws) can get us to 4, sub1 can make 3, sub2 makes 2, and sub3 makes 1(we can technically go to sub4 but we lose any ability at all to make white mana, after all in our current build we need 1 white at least to make any additional).
So we can’t change the sub level of an action but we can change the size result(thanks to TYS). We do need to resolve all of the lowest sub level before we can resolve any above it, but we can make more layers below if it doesn’t destroy the entire thing(going to sub4). So if we are sitting at sub2 and can make sub3 and this should be fine from a non infinite stand point.
Now I could be completely wrong in tying white mana production to the sub levels, but I see something interesting here in this that lines up with how stages end up increasing our layers when we look at the math. Our 3 sub levels lined up well with taking x->x^^^x to generate a layers worth of growth ...
Also I think something I was getting stuck on was why we can start and get to 4 mana. The thing is that we did use up draws to get to that point, they just happen to come during the resolution of emergency powers. This means we can’t make 4 mana without using draws. This stipulation is what keeps us in check. Our ability to make some white mana(but not too much) is what allows us to keep doing interesting non infinite things underneath this proverbial barrier. TYS is what allows us to grow in this environment and not just make loops of non changing lengths. Another interesting note is we can get past 4 white mana. We just do it at the start before we start stage building. The beauty of the stage is that as soon as we move from our main structure into sub1 we don’t drop from x to x-1 in mana production. We drop to maxing out at making(recouping is probably a better word here) 3 no matter how much we have going into it. So we could use up a bunch of draws before making any stage stuff and “bank” a bunch of mana. Then start building our stage. We would could do what seemed like infinite things but they wouldn’t because we could only ever get back 3 of what we spent, and would eventually need to go use up some resources to do more cool stuff.
So in short we can go down through the sub levels easily, but can only go up by resolving the full sub level we are on. Then we might be able to go back down again but we’d use up a resource from our current(or above) layer to do that. Main can repopulate 1, 1–>2, 2->3, but non can go the other way.
We need everything describe above to work exactly(and only) this way or things completely stop working or we cross into unbound loop territory. I can see why it’s so important(and difficult) to have the processes within a stage work in a very specific fashion. I’m still trying to fully get it but I think I’m kinda piecing it together. I usually work big picture->small details when trying to understand things, so even knowing the “rules” for the stages leaves me still a bit perplexed. But I am still trying to get it.
We could be more ambitious and look for a further stage. We have already thought somewhat about adding a Angrath's Rampage stage; I suppose there is still a possibility it could work. Otherwise, we have to think more outside the box. All I really know is that at least one of our alternating groups has to be an instant/sorcery to make use of Thousand-Year Storm, or a triggered ability from many creatures created by Quasiduplicate or Replicate.
As for Sanctum of the Sun, I agree that it is better to have two Mountains instead.
@J_kibbs: Unfortunately, I don't really follow what you are saying, such as the part about sub levels. So I can't say for sure whether you are getting it or not.
I'm not following you either. We are making a lot more than 4 white mana.
Sure we could sacrifice the locket to draw cards, but what are we drawing? Novas? But we can just cast them for that 4 white and still have our untapped locket.
Edit:
@Deedlit:
Hmm, is Flood of Recollection+Bolt Bend a possible warlord's fury replacement? we still have to counter the flood with ionize, but now we wouldn't have to counter Gaea's Blessing.
so u guys have been great at doing your best to explain this to me and for some reason i just can't get a+b=c to actually make sense. i really want this to click because i find all the math/concepts going on super interesting and as someone who likes brewing decks this is just another tool at my disposal to consider.
so if the ppwpppwppwppwppw... structure is where we max out at we need to build these within our blessing draw tower ... i think this is true? obviously the ppwppwppw... we build on our last draw will be our largest, but even building it in the first place is something i'm just not fully grasping. so, and i know this is a lot to ask, could we(probably just me but maybe other lurkers would enjoy this) see a small stage fully built(and explained along the way)? we can simplify the numbers greatly just to allow a size that can be fully written out. if it is being built using up a draw to start then a small tower of W or P is where we will start. so maybe something like a P tower of 4 or 6 P(2 or 3 layers of P to work with) along with our blue plus green ins/sor upping our storm count by 2-3 per W resolution(and our castings of nova will also add to storm count)?
conceptually i think it would be super helpful to see this end of it. yes, you guys have explained stage building before, but when we start with N, X, and Y(etc) for our numbers it can be a bit tough to follow if the math isn't super intuitive. i know the stages are meant to take inputs and go very large very quickly but if we start small enough hopefully people can follow along and get the gist of things before the numbers get too large to keep track of.
the stage aspect of these challenges is the biggest key to getting to super super large numbers. layers are a good start but are child's play when compared to anything involving a stage. having an understanding of the particular mechanics of stages is needed before anyone can even understand what is going on at all, in this or the vintage challenge, so i think having a really simplified, or fully written out, stage example could be extremely helpful to those interested in helping but can't because they are just way over their heads(like me for example lol) conceptually.
@J_kibbs: Okay, I will try to explain a small example. Not now though.
I'll be using the 2 nova+sphynx version as opposed to the slightly more optimal version with TMoD. The overall structure is the same but I dont want to get bogged down in the reshuffles.
For clarity we can also assume that the originals of all of our creatures have been made indestructible by Gideon (except for Excavation Elephant, Spark Double, and Nikya). I'm also going to ignore countering the original novas, because that would inflate the storm count and this gets big enough already.
Starting position: Empty stack, Elephant in hand, Tapped lockets, four white mana floating, novas on top of deck, about a dozen token copies of tragic poet and Citywatch Sphinx in play.
Our output is storm count and it starts at lets say 5.
Every time we resolve a wrath we get a reshuffle trigger for each sphinx, we use these to make more copies of our creatures with Quasiduplicate. (and return elephant to hand if it isn't there already) {We can also dump the lockets in the yard if they get reshuffled.}
Every time we resolve a purify we rebuild our enchantments with tragic poet tokens.
Every time we cast a nova, we counter just the original with disdainful stroke.
So we have WWWWW after taping the lockets, we need to resolve a purify to tap them again.
We cast Purify and put X copies on the stack. (WWW)
We let one resolve, and cast Elephant to return the lockets, tapping them (WWWW)
we let the next Purify resolve.
Position 1
Now we cast wrath and get X+1 copies (WW) {Optimally, we do some stuff in response to the TYS trigger}
So the stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWWWW :top)
We resolve the top wrath to kill our elephant (and increase storm count)
Now we can return the lockets and tap them (WWW)
Resolve another wrath (make many copies of poet in preparation for the purifies)
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWW :top) and we have (WWW) {Position 2}
Cast Purify and put X copies on the stack. (W)
Resolve one of the purifies.
Use elephant to return the lockets (WW) *note: we briefly hit 0 W so we can't go further than this and still be able to kick the elephant.
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWWWWP^x :top)
Now we have a bunch of purifies to resolve but the elephant is stuck in play,
Each purify doesn't really do anything for us to progress. (I chose 5 starting white just so this was not profitable, with 6 our top batch is wraths)
We don't even rebuild after each one.
But we eventually resolve the last purify, and then we use the poets we made earlier to rebuild.
So the stack is (bottom: PPPWWWW:top)
Now we can finally kill the elephant and return the lockets (WWW)
Resolve another wrath
Stack is now (bottom: PPPWW :top) and we have (WWW)
This is exactly the same position as 2 above but with fewer wraths on the stack. (and more storm count)
So we do everything from there again to get here but now the stack is just the bottom purifies and we just resolved a wrath.
Here we resolve one of the bottom purifies, to kill the lockets
Then we return them with the Elephant. (WWWW)
We resolve one more purify
Now we are at position 1 but with only one purify on the stack.
We redo everything from there (including more 2 loops because there are many more wraths in a row now)
When we run out of purifies at the bottom we are at the same starting position but with less mana.
Edit: Deedlit11: good point, we'd still need to ionize the gaea's blessing and still be bottlenecked by life there.
I'm not following you either. We are making a lot more than 4 white mana.
Sure we could sacrifice the locket to draw cards, but what are we drawing? Novas? But we can just cast them for that 4 white and still have our untapped locket.
but if we can do this we use up a draw and can make more draws? isn't this infinite as we can simply rebuild a mini draw tower inside our ppwppwppw structure?
so we would get this:
last
blessing tower draw
stage construct
locket draws
first
with this structure what's stopping us from making another stage structure inside our locket draws? and then stages and then lockets again and again?
Drawing is not as efficient of a way to use our white mana.
Each gaea's blessing card drawn is a nova so the card draws are worth two white mana.
If the lockets could be sacced for less mana then we would have a problem. (well, 1 less is fine because it breaks even, but 2 less does break it.)
The most profitable thing to draw is 2 novas, which we can just cast off the top for 4 white.
If a draw is worth WW and you are spending WWWWW to get two draws you are losing a white in the exchange.
If we can tap lockets 10 times, its better to cast nova 5 times off the top than 4 times by using lockets to draw it.
I don't understand the concept that having more than four white mana will go infinite. Each Cleansing Nova costs two white mana to cast, but you get one back from the lockets. So four white mana will get you three alternating groups, I think. Four white mana and a draw would get us four alternating groups. So yeah, if we could generate four white mana for free, then we would go infinite. But we can't generate four white mana for free. We have to resolve down three alternating groups, plus a couple of Cleansing Novas from the next alternating group down, to gain the white mana we need to build back up three alternating groups. So we can only build back up as much as we resolved down, and doing so takes away Cleansing Novas from the next group down, so it can't go infinite.
I’m skeptical 190 is a stage tho because of post 170(4th paragraph). It seems that post 190 structure is only worth x^y which shouldn’t be a stage(quasi loops on Sphinx triggers maybe gets us to x^^y), unless I am missing something. Also paragraph 5 talks about somehow extending the whole thing anyway, and this is where I get tripped up because 1) I don’t see how it’s possible at all anyway, and 2) if it is and does it by going beyond 4 white mana I’m worried we can recreate scenario zero(edit: starting position) from post 190 while still inside our tower. If we can get back to scenario zero while still inside a tower it might be just efficient enough to make it go infinite another way.
If we can create series of plays that gives us wwww while we have lockets and elephants in hand and we are still in our towers, we can just restart back at scenario zero and go infinite. Regardless of how we get here, if it’s possible, in any way(as long as we are still in our towers), we go infinite.
Currently in the 190 structure we cannot recreate scenario zero without going up to our blessing tower draw, which stops the infinite.
So if to get to wwww floating with lockets and elephants in hand we need to go through N scenarios inside a tower, the most optimum(and infinite) line of play would be this if looking at the progression of those scenarios:
S0->S1->S2->.....SN->S0->S1–>S2->....SN->S0->.....
There is no need to build a stage at this point as optimum play is unbound/infinite without it. There is also no need to leave the tower at all. We just make infinite storm right here.
Scenario 1:
Cleansing Nova is at the top of the library, and a locket is on the battlefield untapped. We tap the locket for one white mana, and spend two mana to cast Cleansing Nova from the library.
Net mana change: -1 white mana
Scenario 2:
Cleansing Nova is at the top of the library, and a locket is on the battlefield untapped. We spend for white mana and sacrifice the locket to draw Cleansing Nova, and then cast it for free.
Net mana change: -4 white mana
Now, how in the world can scenario 2 lead to an infinite loop, if scenario 1 doesn't?
Again using WWWW and saccing a locket to draw two novas is more expensive than casting the novas off the top.
I am voicing concern to the statement “we make a lot more than 4 white” that’s all I’m doing. I have zero idea how U think u do without using draws. The structure in 190 will not ever gain mana in its shown processes, and as I said it checks out fine. Your structure in 190 is the same structure deed was responding to me with in post 170. Deed clearly states there’s more to it than that in paragraph 5. I’m wondering what he’s talking about, and how it’s done.
I’m just showing concern with a blanket statement I might be misunderstanding. I can’t show u how to loop and make mana because I don’t think it’s possible in the first place. But if u say u can I’m showing why it is an issue.
FWIW so far I haven’t seen a process that does it. 190 does not net mana, unless it goes up to the draw tower to do it.
I want to be wrong here. I want 190 to be a stage. If it is that’s great. I’m just seeing conflicting statements that have me asking what is what. Just trying to figure out what is going on is all.
If the structure in 190 started with 100 mana the recursive loops would go about 100 layers deep (98) and each one loops for each storm count we have while also increasing that count.
After resolving all of those loops, we'd have 99 mana and if we have a draw on top of the stack now, we can use that as the nova type we need and then redo the whole 100 mana combo for each of those wraths.
Once we finally run out of draws we can make smaller and smaller towers to efficiently use our white to max the storm count until we finally run out.
So the next casting of Gaea's blessing gives even more copies.