As to being crazy lucky, there's really not a way to avoid that here.
I feel better about actually getting them unbelievably dead. I think it should be net damage. IE: Invigorate on an unblocked creature only gets an extra 1 through, (5 with double strike).
Looks like 1 copy of Kasmina's Transmutation is enough. Bolt Bend lets us equip faster than sorcery speed but slower than instant speed.
Equip Helm of the Host,
cast Transmutation,
cast Bolt Bend,
cast Nikya, resolves.
Bolt bend both to Nikya.
Now we can Role Reversal it and the Transmutation over, exile the Transmutation with Deputy, make the nonlegendary token, exile the Deputy with the Executioner, and hide the token with Transmutation.
Lena makes the token indestructable, and we are all set.
Edit: going through the start, we can pump the storm count a bit before Emergency powers with bladebrand drawing Gaea's Blessing drawing Bladebrand drawing Emergency powers.
Having 3 extra storm really helps the start go smoothly.
Nice line. I was going to just have Kasmina's Transmutation and Helm of the Host on the battlefield when we cast Nikya of the Old Ways. Then we can equip Nikya, go to combat, and make the nonlegendary token. We then exile the Transmutation with Deputy of Detention, and exile the Deputy and the original Nikya with two copies of Hanged Executioner. Transmutation can be put on the nonlegendary token, we can make it indestructible with Lena, and we can Role Reversal it over to the opponent.
It looks like giving Whispering Snitch lifelink is worth it, we can use it on our side as well, and get 38 big life gains before sending it over to the opponent. Bond of Discipline seems fine for that.
I was thinking about using Gideon Blackblade to sub for both Lena and Bond of Discipline, but it looks harder to make that work with the nonlegendary Nikya token. We could try waiting until after combat to give the token indestructible... but, we have a bunch of attacking Tenth District Veterans that we have to keep from killing the opponent. We would normally cast a Wrath Nova, but that would destroy the nonlegendary Nikya token with this new plan. Could we Dreadmalkin away the Veterans? That would require a lot of black mana. But, I think we can make it work: If we have N Veterans to eliminate, we can use Replicate to create approximately sqrt(N) nonlegendary Nikyas. We can then tap approximately sqrt(N) Rakdos Guildgates, to get the more than N mana we need to get rid of the Veterans and the extra Nikyas. That should work I think.
So, it looks like Gideon can work. The question is, do we want to start with Gideon Blackblade and an extra Quasiduplicate, or Lena, Selfless Champion and Bond of Discipline? Gideon will require an extra draw for when we need to give Whispering Snitch lifelink. But, having an extra Quasiduplicate will ramp the TYS count by a lot, so we will get a lot more copies when we get around to countering Gaea's Blessing. So I think having Gideon and Quasiduplicate is a little better.
Right, we can pre-make tokens... Though there might be a issue with white mana in your line. I was trying to only use one so we dont have to go off with weird combat timings.
Yeah Gideon works, Even simpler, we can role reversal him over and send the 10th district veterans there. (note: that He and Lena are the last white legends for the Mox), we can even gain a bunch of life from hitting him.
I'm not sure how much an extra draw is worth, currently my write-up has the initial 7 as:
10 Emergence Zone
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Precognition Field
28 Bladebrand
14 Repudiate // Replicate
16 Mox Amber
17 Manifold Key
With a storm count of 4, and no floating mana.
I'm not sure if that is optimal, but seems close.
Replicate gets us some non hasty Gyre engineers, then Bladebrand needs to draw Adventurous Impulse, which needs to get Torch courier, and then we are good to make mana with Replicate.
One needs to draw The Mending to get us started with reshuffling and to find Arcane Adaptation. (Citywatch sphinx requires a wrath nova and we need to start with purify (and we want to delay our first surveil as long as possible anyway))
But I think all other copies of Bladebrand can draw Nova. So a draw is worth a whole nova stage, even this early.
... but Bond of discipline costs white to cast. So gideon is better unless we can find a better source of lifelink.
Looking, there is Lyra dawnbringer, which can work with Arcane Adaptation temporarily on angels. Or for just giving the Snitch lifelink Squire's Devotion?
I think we can get bump the storm count by one by drawing Bladebrand, then Gaea's Blessing, then Bladebrand again, then drawing Emergency Powers. (edit: Oh wait, you already have that.)
Lyra Dawnbringer looks like it will work, but I think Gideon Blackblade plus Quasiduplicate is still better. We don't need to draw Gideon until we are ready to go with Whispering Snitch, and that is not until we have used up all our life casting Ionize on Gaea's Blessing, each time drawing a gazillion Bladebrands. Having an extra Quasiduplicate means our storm count for those Gaea's Blessings and Bladebrands will be much higher, so we can draw a lot more cards, one of which can be Gideon.
Right, Gideon isn't just lifelink, its indestructibility as well. If Lyra and Lena were stapled into the same card then they would be better, but an extra deck slot is worth more than a card draw.
Edit, oh I was adding gideon to my document and looks like now there's an issue with gideon, role reversal, sarkhan, and deputy of detention letting us reset sarkhan without spending a black.
Oh sneaky. So we do want another card to give lifelink. Squire's Devotion only gives one Snitch lifelink, whereas we want to give it to 19 just for our side. Sentinel's Mark could be given to all 19 one at a time, so that should work. But, I would guess that Lyra Dawnbringer plus Arcane Adaptation is still the best.
Hmm, now that you mention it, I think we do gain it at the same time. I'm not sure whether it is a different instance of life gain, so we might double up on Angel of Vitality with lifelink, but that's not a big difference. Yeah, sorry, I took us down the wrong track here.
Yeah, but those incidental improvements are never worth more than improving the beginning. Another Quasiduplicate will pump the storm count by a bunch, getting us way more untapped Rakdos Guildgate when we attack, so that's worth more then some extra life gain during combat.
Yeah... we need to do as much as possible precombat.
And there's not really much more we can add in that is as effective as another quasiduplicate.
Hmm, Artifacts like Millstone and Wand of vertebrae aren't very good because we only get 1 extra elephant trigger because we can't make nonlegendary Nabans.
Maybe extra The Mending of Dominarias? those give us more reshuffles off of both types of nova (mainly wrath though).
Edit: Oh, and is our opponent allowed to play lands on their turns? or do they have to discard? It affects how many cards we can force them to draw with Unmoored Ego
Hmm, most of the reshuffles come from the Wrath Novas. It looks like it's better to use Replicate on Citywatch Sphinx, since if we use them on Martyr for the Cause, we will also need to Replicate Tragic Poet and Torch Courier later to bring back The Mending of Dominaria after they have been sacrificed. Having more TMoDs won't keep us from having to bring them back, so that doesn't seem to help nearly as much.
I personally like the idea of the opponent doing nothing until they are forced to do something; *then* they act in a manner that hurts us the most. But, Iijil and SadisticMystic have been favoring the rule being the opponent can be proactive in hurting us. So in that case I suppose the opponent would play lands in the first two turns.
I guess we can just add a way to destroy lands though - then we can destroy the opponent's lands, and make them reshuffle. So that should bring their library back up to 53, and we can get 212 mana from Smothering Tithe. Fall of the Thran perhaps?
Edit: Oh wait, we can also throw in Mind Rot. Then we can make the opponent discard six cards, and reshuffle them into their library, so we can make them draw 59 cards, for 236 mana. Nice. Is there any way to get to 60?
Instead of more Repudiate // Replicates, more [c]Repeated Reverberation[c/]s seems better, since red mana is now just as cheap as blue and green mana. If our storm count is at X, the first Reverberation will get X+1 copies including the original. Then the second Reverberation will get X+2 + 2(X+1) = 3X+4 copies. Then, if we cast say Replicate, it will get X+3 + 2(3X+4) = 7X+11 copies. This is better than the 3X+6 we would get from casting three Replicates in a row. We could also use multiple Repeated Reverberations before other spells as well, or before Sarkhan.
Good point about the Reverberations for rounding out the deck slots. Them also working on Sarkhan is a big boon.
I was thinking about using Karn again, but I don't think being able to make a bunch of white mana can compete with a bunch more Sarkhan activations.
Also, I think we were using Lotus field to need fewer 10th District Veterans, but never changed it in the decklist. They can sacrifice the forest and emergence zone, which we can get back with Fall of the Thran and The Mending.
Another issue is that now since we only get one naban, Dowsing dagger isn't free to return in the stage. I had my doubts about dowsing dagger being able to provide enough plants for all the angels and Ceratops. Baffling end is better, but I'm still unsure we can give them enough, that's only one creature per purify. And sure we do have a lot of purifies, but we get way more Reduplicates.
I guess we don't have to send everything over... but Thorn lieutenant would let us if we needed to. Unfortunately we need to still give them a creature initially. We still have half of Status // Statue to cast for G.
Hmm, if they play their lands, we can reverse that with one of ours after we make it a creature with sylvan awakening, then reverse our land guy with the lieutenant via Role Reversal.
In that case, they wouldn't play their lands and we don't need Fall of the Thran.
So I think we can cut both Fall of the Thran and Dowsing dagger and add Thorn lieutenant. We even get to sacrifice the lands we steal to Lotus Vale, so we can still make them draw the full 59.
Edit, oh and Lost Vale was infinite as an untapped black source.
Hmm, interesting - so, if they don't play their lands (which is probably the opponent's optimal play now), we can cast Captive Audience, cast Role Reversal to switch it with The Mending of Dominaria, then proliferate twice to bring the opponent's lands from the graveyard to the battlefield. (which I guess will be 6 after the first steps of TMoD) Then we can Role Reversal them with our lands after we animate them, and we make three Lotus Vales to sacrifice all six of their lands. We then Role Reversal one of the opponent's animated lands with Thorn Lieutenant, and we can now target it with Quasiduplicate (throwing in Bolt Bend for some extra targetings) to create a bunch of tokens on the opponent' side. Very nice. We can then cast Captive Audience again to switch with Kasmina's Transformation later. I suppose it also makes sense to sacrifice a Lean to give Thorn Lieutenant indestructrible, so we don't have to bother doing it again.
I actually intentionally stayed away from Lotus Vale - I realized that a Lotus Vale isn't actually three times better than a Rakdos Guildgate; with Nikya of the Old Ways, it's actually only infinitesimally better. Which means that going with Lotus Vale is only better if we can create just as many Lotus Vales as we can Rakdos Guildgates, which means we have to have The Mending of Dominaria get back all our sacrificed lands without requiring a single saved resource. And I don't think it can; we need to proliferate TMoD, which means we have to cast a Wrath Nova after every Lotus Vale comes on the battlefield, which means generating a bunch of white mana prior to creating the Lotus Vales, which means saving a Status // Statue; that Statue could have been used earlier to increase our storm count by a gajillion prior to Replicating our Lotus Vales, so we wind up worse.
But, now we need a way to get rid of our opponent's lands. Using Dreadmalkin is not as good, since it will cost a black mana to use. So I guess we do switch to Lotus Vale now, for the sacrifice effect.
Edit: all those Lotus Vales should have been Lotus Field.
Ooh, good point about the swamps. In the original rules, we had the opponent's deck consist of 60 Islands. I later changed it to 60 Wastes, because Wastes to me seemed more appropriate for a "blank" deck. In Stakfish's rules, he then changed it to arbitrary basic lands, presumably because for his deck it didn't matter which lands the opponent had. I think it is fair to go back to the original 60 Islands; it's just coincidence that the opponent having Islands work out for us, so I don't think that is particularly manipulative on our part.
If we couldn't assume that the opponent didn't have Swamps, then we couldn't use our Nikya token combo, so no getting lots of Nikyas. In that case we could go back to the Azor's Gateway version, which gets about 2 -> 7 -> 23 -> 9 or so, so I guess it's not too much worse.
Hmm, probably fine to go with Islands then. Wastes would be best, but we should probably keep the opponent's deck legal too.
Also we do actually have to get rid of their first 2 lands, since that became optimal again, we can technically use Dreadmalkin for it, but that's a really steep cost. What if we use a different land animating spell and just didn't made their lands indestructible with Lena? Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi and Waker of the Wilds seem like the best options. They can even kill lands via legend rule or 0 toughness if we want to.
Awakening is nice because its a spell for storm and provides haste, not nice because of being legendary means we need to cast it for each land we want. Waker of the Wilds requires slightly less mana to animate a land.
Green mana becomes a lot tighter than before, as we can make it on demand, but not nearly in the quantities we had had before. I guess a second leyline is better than the second elf in the opener.
Hmm, I just had a thought about an opening of an opening hand of 4x leyline elf land land giving us the 7 mana for emergency powers on turn 2. But I don't see quite how we could go off from there...
Hmm, I guess the Legendary factor of Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi isn't too bad - we'll generally want to cast it every reshuffle, even at the cost of 5 mana, as it increases our storm count. 5 mana means a little more than two Replicates, as two Replicates gets us a Gyre Engineer and a Torch Courier, for four mana. We can generally just keep casting it on a Sulfur Falls, as Gyre Engineer can fulfill our green mana needs. So I favor Awakening a little bit over Waker of the Wilds.
The possibility of getting started on turn 2 is intriguing. I think it would be worth giving up several layers to improve to turn 2, so long as we can keep the Nova stage. One thing to consider is starting off on the draw, so that we have 9 cards by turn 2; this would still be faster than turn 3 on the play. Not sure what we could do with the extra card though; we could add a Gift of Growth for another two green mana, I suppose.
Edit: So, one thing that we could do is to is to have Emergency Powers put Samut, Tyrant Smasher into play. Then three more Gyre Engineers can cast Omniscience, with 8 green mana left over. Unfortunately, that leaves us with only two cards left to get going. We can probably make it work though. Actually, after the first Gyre Engineer we can cast Adventurous Impulse to fetch the other two, so we can have three cards and seven green mana left over, with a storm count of two.
Edit: I'm being stupid, we need mana for those Gyre Engineers. There may still be a way to pull this off, however.
Edit: Okay, I know how to pull it off: Bolas's Citadel. After that, we can just bite the bullet and pay 10 life to put Omniscience into play, although there may be a line of play that can preserve some of our life.
Hmm, I guess that works. It does cut off life gain as a resource in the combo though, so we dead end pretty fast with Ionize.
Oh, wait no we can still use life. Bolas's Citadel somehow does not appear to go infinite in the current turn 3 deck. it lets us cast bladebrand for 2 life, but we can already cast it X times for 2 life via Gaea's blessing.
well actually Bolas's citadel's last ability is problematic, letting us sacrifice things for cheap.
If it did work we would have to go something like:
This is tricky because we don't yet have flash from Emergence Zone.
So the line is something like:
Bolas's citadel
Omniscience - take 10 to 8 life (we had to temple garden on turn 1)
TYS, precognition field, The Mending, Mox, key, bladebrand.
As the 7 cards, Bladebrand draws Adventurous Impulse, AI gets a mana dork (gyre engineer still seems the best) and Torch courier. Reduplicate some Engineers.
The Mending gets us a guy and reshuffles, and now we can AI for torch courier and 3 other creatures. (so in total Elephant, tragic poet, Naban, Lena?)
Reduplicate lets us haste all of the engineers and we appear to be nearly fully set up, .
Okay, so it looks like we can get started. That sacrifice ability does seem to be a bit of a problem, it eliminates our Sarkhan, Dragonsoul strategy. We could go back to red mana as the limited resource, but it would be nice to keep Nikya of the Old Ways. But our other plan using black, using Finale of Eternity to destroy our Dreadhorde Butchers, doesn't seem to work with Bolas's Citadel either. So I guess we do go back to red mana, which means no Nikya, so we want to use Sanctum of the Sun.
As far as I can see, BC's sacrifice ability won't otherwise hurt our red mana deck.
Edit: Basing this off the deck in post #448, and making some changes:
So, I took out the proliferate combo, since it requires a red mana land to fetch, which I couldn't squeeze into the start, and adding another land would lose us out on a Sanctum of the Sun so it wouldn't improve the damage.
It looks like we can exile the last 23 cards, and the four Leyline of Abundances, so we can exile 27. That takes us to a final damage of more than 10 -> 10 -> (2 -> 7 -> 29 -> 8) -> 8.
Well, this is looking pretty good, Bolas's citadel is a pretty good replacement for that 5 color sphinx as the 4th artifact.
So the layers are: nova stage -> hijack -> Honor -> Gaea's Blessing -> Ionize -> Angel -> Neonate -> opp's Angel -> opp's Ceratops -> banefire.
Though we do need something like Martyr for the cause to get Emergence Zone in play.
I'm not seeing any obvious infinites, and Angel of Vitality works very nicely with Azor's Gateway, so we can actually tap it for a lot without being inefficient earlier.
Edit: i think there might be a line where we take less than 10 to get omniscience in play: Gyre Engineer+Torch courier off the top is only 4 life to get us GGGGGU, two Gift of Growths from hand get us to more than enough to cast Omniscience, and doesn't even really eat into our hand space as its upping the storm count for the Bladebrand we are about to cast.
Unfortunately, Gift of Growth has the same CMC as Dowsing Dagger, so it's not exilable, and we would lose out on two Sanctum of the Suns. We could switch out Dowsing Dagger, but we would have to replace it with Baffling End and another artifact, so we still lose out on a Sanctum of the Sun. So it's better to just eat the early damage, unless we can find a way around it using cards with the right CMC.
I have noticed that we can have the second land be Steam Vents, so that we can use proliferate to recycle it and get red mana. Unfortunately, our previous plan runs into a problem with trying to get the opponent a planeswalker to attack. As far as I know, only the two Gideons can turn into creatures. Gideon Blackblade is not allowed, and Gideon, the Oathsworn has CMC 6, which is the same as the nonreplaceable Bolas's Citadel, so the proliferate combo will only make up for the last Sanctum of the Sun. So, it seems like the best we can do is to attack with 18-19 Guildpact Informants, with four The Mending of Dominarias, allowing us to retrieve Steam Vents 36 times. So that takes us to 272 mana before we start with the Sanctum of the Suns.
You are right though, we do need a way to put Emergence Zone into play. Looking at cards, I haven't found many that can put a land into play untapped. Both Martyr for the Cause and Llanowar Scout could work, but both are CMC 2. I suppose Llanowar Scout is better, since it allows us to keep our proliferate combo for Steam Vents.
I feel better about actually getting them unbelievably dead. I think it should be net damage. IE: Invigorate on an unblocked creature only gets an extra 1 through, (5 with double strike).
Looks like 1 copy of Kasmina's Transmutation is enough. Bolt Bend lets us equip faster than sorcery speed but slower than instant speed.
Equip Helm of the Host,
cast Transmutation,
cast Bolt Bend,
cast Nikya, resolves.
Bolt bend both to Nikya.
Now we can Role Reversal it and the Transmutation over, exile the Transmutation with Deputy, make the nonlegendary token, exile the Deputy with the Executioner, and hide the token with Transmutation.
Lena makes the token indestructable, and we are all set.
Edit: going through the start, we can pump the storm count a bit before Emergency powers with bladebrand drawing Gaea's Blessing drawing Bladebrand drawing Emergency powers.
Having 3 extra storm really helps the start go smoothly.
It looks like giving Whispering Snitch lifelink is worth it, we can use it on our side as well, and get 38 big life gains before sending it over to the opponent. Bond of Discipline seems fine for that.
I was thinking about using Gideon Blackblade to sub for both Lena and Bond of Discipline, but it looks harder to make that work with the nonlegendary Nikya token. We could try waiting until after combat to give the token indestructible... but, we have a bunch of attacking Tenth District Veterans that we have to keep from killing the opponent. We would normally cast a Wrath Nova, but that would destroy the nonlegendary Nikya token with this new plan. Could we Dreadmalkin away the Veterans? That would require a lot of black mana. But, I think we can make it work: If we have N Veterans to eliminate, we can use Replicate to create approximately sqrt(N) nonlegendary Nikyas. We can then tap approximately sqrt(N) Rakdos Guildgates, to get the more than N mana we need to get rid of the Veterans and the extra Nikyas. That should work I think.
So, it looks like Gideon can work. The question is, do we want to start with Gideon Blackblade and an extra Quasiduplicate, or Lena, Selfless Champion and Bond of Discipline? Gideon will require an extra draw for when we need to give Whispering Snitch lifelink. But, having an extra Quasiduplicate will ramp the TYS count by a lot, so we will get a lot more copies when we get around to countering Gaea's Blessing. So I think having Gideon and Quasiduplicate is a little better.
Yeah Gideon works, Even simpler, we can role reversal him over and send the 10th district veterans there. (note: that He and Lena are the last white legends for the Mox), we can even gain a bunch of life from hitting him.
I'm not sure how much an extra draw is worth, currently my write-up has the initial 7 as:
10 Emergence Zone
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Precognition Field
28 Bladebrand
14 Repudiate // Replicate
16 Mox Amber
17 Manifold Key
With a storm count of 4, and no floating mana.
I'm not sure if that is optimal, but seems close.
Replicate gets us some non hasty Gyre engineers, then Bladebrand needs to draw Adventurous Impulse, which needs to get Torch courier, and then we are good to make mana with Replicate.
One needs to draw The Mending to get us started with reshuffling and to find Arcane Adaptation. (Citywatch sphinx requires a wrath nova and we need to start with purify (and we want to delay our first surveil as long as possible anyway))
But I think all other copies of Bladebrand can draw Nova. So a draw is worth a whole nova stage, even this early.
... but Bond of discipline costs white to cast. So gideon is better unless we can find a better source of lifelink.
Looking, there is Lyra dawnbringer, which can work with Arcane Adaptation temporarily on angels. Or for just giving the Snitch lifelink Squire's Devotion?
Oh, that's a much cleaner way to handle the Tenth District Veterans.
I think we can get bump the storm count by one by drawing Bladebrand, then Gaea's Blessing, then Bladebrand again, then drawing Emergency Powers. (edit: Oh wait, you already have that.)
Yeah, we do want to delay Citywatch Sphinx as long as possible. I think though we can still get a lot of reshuffles with a Wrath Nova; we can create a lot of copies of Martyr for the Cause, destroy them with a Wrath Nova, then respond with Adventurous Impulse and Repudiate // Replicate to create a lot of copies of Tragic Poet and Torch Courier to keep bringing The Mending of Dominaria to proliferate it.
Lyra Dawnbringer looks like it will work, but I think Gideon Blackblade plus Quasiduplicate is still better. We don't need to draw Gideon until we are ready to go with Whispering Snitch, and that is not until we have used up all our life casting Ionize on Gaea's Blessing, each time drawing a gazillion Bladebrands. Having an extra Quasiduplicate means our storm count for those Gaea's Blessings and Bladebrands will be much higher, so we can draw a lot more cards, one of which can be Gideon.
Edit, oh I was adding gideon to my document and looks like now there's an issue with gideon, role reversal, sarkhan, and deputy of detention letting us reset sarkhan without spending a black.
We can still get an extra lifelink event with first strike and regular combat damage, and we can maybe even force our opponent to block.
And there's not really much more we can add in that is as effective as another quasiduplicate.
Hmm, Artifacts like Millstone and Wand of vertebrae aren't very good because we only get 1 extra elephant trigger because we can't make nonlegendary Nabans.
Maybe extra The Mending of Dominarias? those give us more reshuffles off of both types of nova (mainly wrath though).
Edit: Oh, and is our opponent allowed to play lands on their turns? or do they have to discard? It affects how many cards we can force them to draw with Unmoored Ego
I personally like the idea of the opponent doing nothing until they are forced to do something; *then* they act in a manner that hurts us the most. But, Iijil and SadisticMystic have been favoring the rule being the opponent can be proactive in hurting us. So in that case I suppose the opponent would play lands in the first two turns.
I guess we can just add a way to destroy lands though - then we can destroy the opponent's lands, and make them reshuffle. So that should bring their library back up to 53, and we can get 212 mana from Smothering Tithe. Fall of the Thran perhaps?
Edit: Oh wait, we can also throw in Mind Rot. Then we can make the opponent discard six cards, and reshuffle them into their library, so we can make them draw 59 cards, for 236 mana. Nice. Is there any way to get to 60?
Oh Duh: Gaea's Blessing.
Mind rot costs a black, better is Burglar Rat
Hmm, I don't think we can get to 60, as we have to exile an initial card to force them to draw.
Instead of more Repudiate // Replicates, more [c]Repeated Reverberation[c/]s seems better, since red mana is now just as cheap as blue and green mana. If our storm count is at X, the first Reverberation will get X+1 copies including the original. Then the second Reverberation will get X+2 + 2(X+1) = 3X+4 copies. Then, if we cast say Replicate, it will get X+3 + 2(3X+4) = 7X+11 copies. This is better than the 3X+6 we would get from casting three Replicates in a row. We could also use multiple Repeated Reverberations before other spells as well, or before Sarkhan.
So, I think we're looking at:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Forest
3 Llanowar Elves
4 Island
5 Gyre Engineer
6 Llanowar Elves
7 Sulfur Falls
8 Omniscience
9 Emergency Powers
10 Emergence Zone
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Precognition Field
13 Adventurous Impulse
14 Repudiate // Replicate
15 Torch Courier
Stage Combo:
16 Mox Amber
17 Manifold Key
18 Excavation Elephant
19 Cleansing Nova
20 Disdainful Stroke
21 Naban, Dean of Iteration
22 Arcane Adaptation
23 Tragic Poet
24 The Mending of Dominaria
25 Gaea's Blessing
White Mana:
26 Status // Statue
27 Bolt Bend
Drawing:
28 Bladebrand
29 Ionize
Life Gain:
30 Dreadmalkin
31 Sarkhan, Dragonsoul
32 Repeated Reverberation
33 Imperial Ceratops
34 Angel of Vitality
35 Dowsing Dagger
36 Role Reversal
37 Vampire Neonate
Black Mana:
38 Rakdos Guildgate
39 Sylvan Awakening
40 Tenth District Veteran
41 Martyr for the Cause
Extra Mana:
42 Nikya of the Old Ways
43 Helm of the Host
44 Kasmina's Transmutation
45 Captive Audience
46 Deupty of Detention
47 Hanged Executioner
48 Lena, Selfless Champion
49 Smothering Tithe
50 Smothering Tithe
51 Smothering Tithe
52 Smothering Tithe
53 Unmoored Ego
54 Burglar Rat
55 Fall of the Thran
Early Life Gain:
56 Whispering Snitch
57 Citywatch Sphinx
Whatever:
58 Repeated Reverberation
59 Repeated Reverberation
Big Finish:
60 Angrath's Marauders
Updated damage: More than 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 238 -> 8) -> 9.
I was thinking about using Karn again, but I don't think being able to make a bunch of white mana can compete with a bunch more Sarkhan activations.
Also, I think we were using Lotus field to need fewer 10th District Veterans, but never changed it in the decklist. They can sacrifice the forest and emergence zone, which we can get back with Fall of the Thran and The Mending.
Another issue is that now since we only get one naban, Dowsing dagger isn't free to return in the stage. I had my doubts about dowsing dagger being able to provide enough plants for all the angels and Ceratops. Baffling end is better, but I'm still unsure we can give them enough, that's only one creature per purify. And sure we do have a lot of purifies, but we get way more Reduplicates.
I guess we don't have to send everything over... but Thorn lieutenant would let us if we needed to. Unfortunately we need to still give them a creature initially. We still have half of Status // Statue to cast for G.
Hmm, if they play their lands, we can reverse that with one of ours after we make it a creature with sylvan awakening, then reverse our land guy with the lieutenant via Role Reversal.
In that case, they wouldn't play their lands and we don't need Fall of the Thran.
Actually, even better: Fall of the Thran isn't optional, so we can still do that with their lands. Same with The Mending of Dominaria.
So I think we can cut both Fall of the Thran and Dowsing dagger and add Thorn lieutenant. We even get to sacrifice the lands we steal to Lotus Vale, so we can still make them draw the full 59.
Edit, oh and Lost Vale was infinite as an untapped black source.
I actually intentionally stayed away from Lotus Vale - I realized that a Lotus Vale isn't actually three times better than a Rakdos Guildgate; with Nikya of the Old Ways, it's actually only infinitesimally better. Which means that going with Lotus Vale is only better if we can create just as many Lotus Vales as we can Rakdos Guildgates, which means we have to have The Mending of Dominaria get back all our sacrificed lands without requiring a single saved resource. And I don't think it can; we need to proliferate TMoD, which means we have to cast a Wrath Nova after every Lotus Vale comes on the battlefield, which means generating a bunch of white mana prior to creating the Lotus Vales, which means saving a Status // Statue; that Statue could have been used earlier to increase our storm count by a gajillion prior to Replicating our Lotus Vales, so we wind up worse.
But, now we need a way to get rid of our opponent's lands. Using Dreadmalkin is not as good, since it will cost a black mana to use. So I guess we do switch to Lotus Vale now, for the sacrifice effect.
Edit: all those Lotus Vales should have been Lotus Field.
We definitely can make more guildgates.
Also, we don't need to sacrifice their lands, we just have them draw the full 59 first then their last land can be used for these shenanigans.
Hmm, I guess we go infinite if they are playing any swamps?
Ooh, good point about the swamps. In the original rules, we had the opponent's deck consist of 60 Islands. I later changed it to 60 Wastes, because Wastes to me seemed more appropriate for a "blank" deck. In Stakfish's rules, he then changed it to arbitrary basic lands, presumably because for his deck it didn't matter which lands the opponent had. I think it is fair to go back to the original 60 Islands; it's just coincidence that the opponent having Islands work out for us, so I don't think that is particularly manipulative on our part.
If we couldn't assume that the opponent didn't have Swamps, then we couldn't use our Nikya token combo, so no getting lots of Nikyas. In that case we could go back to the Azor's Gateway version, which gets about 2 -> 7 -> 23 -> 9 or so, so I guess it's not too much worse.
Also we do actually have to get rid of their first 2 lands, since that became optimal again, we can technically use Dreadmalkin for it, but that's a really steep cost. What if we use a different land animating spell and just didn't made their lands indestructible with Lena? Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi and Waker of the Wilds seem like the best options. They can even kill lands via legend rule or 0 toughness if we want to.
Awakening is nice because its a spell for storm and provides haste, not nice because of being legendary means we need to cast it for each land we want.
Waker of the Wilds requires slightly less mana to animate a land.
Green mana becomes a lot tighter than before, as we can make it on demand, but not nearly in the quantities we had had before. I guess a second leyline is better than the second elf in the opener.
Hmm, I just had a thought about an opening of an opening hand of 4x leyline elf land land giving us the 7 mana for emergency powers on turn 2. But I don't see quite how we could go off from there...
The possibility of getting started on turn 2 is intriguing. I think it would be worth giving up several layers to improve to turn 2, so long as we can keep the Nova stage. One thing to consider is starting off on the draw, so that we have 9 cards by turn 2; this would still be faster than turn 3 on the play. Not sure what we could do with the extra card though; we could add a Gift of Growth for another two green mana, I suppose.
Edit: So, one thing that we could do is to is to have Emergency Powers put Samut, Tyrant Smasher into play. Then three more Gyre Engineers can cast Omniscience, with 8 green mana left over. Unfortunately, that leaves us with only two cards left to get going. We can probably make it work though. Actually, after the first Gyre Engineer we can cast Adventurous Impulse to fetch the other two, so we can have three cards and seven green mana left over, with a storm count of two.
Edit: I'm being stupid, we need mana for those Gyre Engineers. There may still be a way to pull this off, however.
Edit: Okay, I know how to pull it off: Bolas's Citadel. After that, we can just bite the bullet and pay 10 life to put Omniscience into play, although there may be a line of play that can preserve some of our life.
Oh, wait no we can still use life. Bolas's Citadel somehow does not appear to go infinite in the current turn 3 deck. it lets us cast bladebrand for 2 life, but we can already cast it X times for 2 life via Gaea's blessing.
well actually Bolas's citadel's last ability is problematic, letting us sacrifice things for cheap.
If it did work we would have to go something like:
This is tricky because we don't yet have flash from Emergence Zone.
So the line is something like:
Bolas's citadel
Omniscience - take 10 to 8 life (we had to temple garden on turn 1)
TYS, precognition field, The Mending, Mox, key, bladebrand.
As the 7 cards, Bladebrand draws Adventurous Impulse, AI gets a mana dork (gyre engineer still seems the best) and Torch courier. Reduplicate some Engineers.
The Mending gets us a guy and reshuffles, and now we can AI for torch courier and 3 other creatures. (so in total Elephant, tragic poet, Naban, Lena?)
Reduplicate lets us haste all of the engineers and we appear to be nearly fully set up, .
As far as I can see, BC's sacrifice ability won't otherwise hurt our red mana deck.
Edit: Basing this off the deck in post #448, and making some changes:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Leyline of Abundance
5 Temple Garden
6 Llanowar Elves
7 Hinterland Harbor
8 Emergency Powers
9 Bolas's Citadel
10 Emergence Zone
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Precognition Field
13 Adventurous Impulse
14 Gyre Engineer
15 Repudiate // Replicate
16 Finale of Devastation
Stage Combo:
17 Mox Amber
18 Manifold Key
19 Excavation Elephant
20 Cleansing Nova
21 Disdainful Stroke
22 Yarok, the Desecrated
23 Tragic Poet
24 The Mending of Dominaria
25 Gaea's Blessing
White Mana and Drawing:
26 Hijack
27 Honor the God-Pharaoh
28 Ionize
Life Gain:
29 Banefire
30 Imperial Ceratops
31 Bolt Bend
32 Angel of Vitality
33 Dowsing Dagger
34 Switcheroo
35 Vampire Neonate
Land Transforming:
36 Azor's Gateway
Untapping:
37 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
Returning from Exile:
38 Karn, the Great Creator
Early Red Mana:
39 Smothering Tithe
40 Smothering Tithe
41 Smothering Tithe
42 Smothering Tithe
43 Unmoored Ego
44 Rat Burglar
45 Demolish
46 Huatli, the Sun's Heart
47 Ajani, Wise Counselor
48 Ajani, Strength of the Pride
49 Repeated Reverberation
50 Ajani, the Greathearted
51 Dovin, Grand Arbiter
52 Vraska, Golgari Queen
53 Whispering Snitch
54 Citywatch Spinx
55 Teysa Karlov
56 Repeated Reverberation
57 Repeated Reverberation
58 Repeated Reverberation
59 Repudiate // Replicate
60 Repudiate // Replicate
So, I took out the proliferate combo, since it requires a red mana land to fetch, which I couldn't squeeze into the start, and adding another land would lose us out on a Sanctum of the Sun so it wouldn't improve the damage.
It looks like we can exile the last 23 cards, and the four Leyline of Abundances, so we can exile 27. That takes us to a final damage of more than 10 -> 10 -> (2 -> 7 -> 29 -> 8) -> 8.
So the layers are: nova stage -> hijack -> Honor -> Gaea's Blessing -> Ionize -> Angel -> Neonate -> opp's Angel -> opp's Ceratops -> banefire.
Though we do need something like Martyr for the cause to get Emergence Zone in play.
I'm not seeing any obvious infinites, and Angel of Vitality works very nicely with Azor's Gateway, so we can actually tap it for a lot without being inefficient earlier.
Edit: i think there might be a line where we take less than 10 to get omniscience in play: Gyre Engineer+Torch courier off the top is only 4 life to get us GGGGGU, two Gift of Growths from hand get us to more than enough to cast Omniscience, and doesn't even really eat into our hand space as its upping the storm count for the Bladebrand we are about to cast.
I have noticed that we can have the second land be Steam Vents, so that we can use proliferate to recycle it and get red mana. Unfortunately, our previous plan runs into a problem with trying to get the opponent a planeswalker to attack. As far as I know, only the two Gideons can turn into creatures. Gideon Blackblade is not allowed, and Gideon, the Oathsworn has CMC 6, which is the same as the nonreplaceable Bolas's Citadel, so the proliferate combo will only make up for the last Sanctum of the Sun. So, it seems like the best we can do is to attack with 18-19 Guildpact Informants, with four The Mending of Dominarias, allowing us to retrieve Steam Vents 36 times. So that takes us to 272 mana before we start with the Sanctum of the Suns.
You are right though, we do need a way to put Emergence Zone into play. Looking at cards, I haven't found many that can put a land into play untapped. Both Martyr for the Cause and Llanowar Scout could work, but both are CMC 2. I suppose Llanowar Scout is better, since it allows us to keep our proliferate combo for Steam Vents.
Edit: I suppose Roalesk, Apex Hybrid could work as a way to proliferate TMoD.
Wayward Swordtooth gives us an extra land drop and costs 3.
Also, technically Sarkhan the masterless can become a creature, they just aren't also planeswalkers anymore.