Edit: Hmm, if we switch from Clan Guildmage to Llanowar Scout, we lose a layer for Replicating lands, but we still get 12 layers, so that's pretty good. We can also switch back to Sanctum of the Sun, without any animated lands. We won't get as many exilable cards as we usually do, but it should still be 10+ maybe?
We get to cut the second stony Strength (the first one is reshuffled by Emergency powers), and the Thorn lieutenant, allowing for 2 more disposable cards.
oh Switcheroo fell out of the deck. (and the last white legend for Mox Amber.) I guess its neutral for disposable cards.
Mirror Image is pretty impotent in this deck, I wonder if there's something better? Whispering Snitch is early lifegain for us and our opponent, but conficts with Dowsing Dagger at 2 cmc. (and is awkward to delay our first surveil, probably not worth it)
OH, and we are forgetting to overkill them again >.< Angrath's Marauders lets the final copy of a Sarkhan activation overkill them.
Okay, so cut two, add three; down to 11 exilable cards.
What is a good white legend? I guess it doesn't really matter; Gideon, the Oathsworn is as good as any, I guess.
I think Gravitic Punch is better than Angrath's Marauders, since it lets us continue the combo with the last Sarkhan activation rather than killing them at that point. (Doesn't really matter, I know)
I thought a bit about the possibility of there being a tighter start that ended in Finale of Revelation or a second Emergency Powers without going infinite, but it does seem hard.
Yeah Gravitic punch is probably better. Though we do have, as far as I can tell, no reason to go into combat yet? Can we just kill them with combat damage? or do we want to force a big dinosaur fight with Declare dominance?
Hmm yes, just going to combat saves us a card slot. Using the combat for something else would have to gain us something more than another Sanctum of the Sun.
Edit: Hmm, thinking about Bolas's Citadel for a bit, I have an idea for how to get another layer for the Banefire and Finale of Eternity decks. Instead of using Vampire Neonate to take 1 life away from the opponent and gain life immediately, we tap Bolas's Citadel to take 10 life from the opponent, and sacrifice 10 of our permanents, including one or more planeswalkers. We then replay the planeswalkers after animating an Interplanar Beacon, and Replicating many copies of it. So playing a planeswalker triggers many life gains from all the Interplanar Beacons, and we can Replicate many Angel of Vitalitys just before we resolve each one. So that gets us another layer over Vampire Neonate.
The issue with Kykar is that we can't exile the card to get another Sanctum of the Sun. We can with Gideon. We can still make red mana with the mox at the end of the stage for a negligible loss in efficiency. Is getting extra Repeated Reverberations worth a Sanctum of the Sun?
Hmm interesting thought about Bolas's Citadel, I remember trying to make interplanar beacon work back when we were trying to chain in an Angrath's Rampage stage. This means that none of our walkers can remove themselves, so no Sarkhan, no Teferi, and, this is the big one, since we proliferate: no big ultimates.
Edit: hmm there has to be something better than Mirror image in that decklist. Because Mirror image does almost nothing at all.
The Saheeli, Sublime artificer trick to get an extra flip of Sanctum of the Sun from making it a Dowsing Dagger?
Oath of teferi to double up on Sarkhan activations?
Oh right, we can animate Gideon, then copy it, and the copy won't be a creature so it won't get destroyed. So that allows us to exile Gideon, which is definitely better than Kykar.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer does get another Sanctum of the Sun so we would be one better if we just dinged the opponent to death with Sarkhan, Dragonsoul, but needing Gravitic Punch means we lose the Sanctum of the Sun that we gain. There's not much between the two options, but not having Saheeli and Gravitic Punch means two more slots that we can use to help early on. (Not that we're having much luck finding good cards for that!)
1 - A couple of proliferates animates our Manifold Key, allowing us to make many copies and get a lot of white mana.
2 - Each land we put into play triggers a lot of Evolution Sages and generates a lot of proliferates.
3 - Casting Replicate on an animated land will put a lot of lands onto the battlefield.
4 - Casting Replicate on Clan Guildmage will allow them to animate many lands.
5 - Casting Blood for Bones will allow us to draw Clan Guildmage many times.
6 - Casting Honor the God-Pharaoh or Bladebrand allows us to draw Blood for Bones many times.
7 - Casting Gaea's Blessing and Ionize allows us to draw our card drawer many times at the cost of 2 life.
8 - Each time we resolve an Interplanar Beacon trigger, we gain a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality.
9 - Each time we cast a Planeswalker, we can trigger a bunch of Interplanar Beacons.
9 - We can sacrifice a Planeswalker with Bolas's Citadel, at the cost of 10 life from the opponent.
10 - Each time we damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent, they gain a lot of life.
10 - Each time we destroy a Dreadhorde Butcher, we can damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent.
11 - Casting Finale of Eternity allows us to destroy a bunch of Dreadhorde Butchers.
12 - Tapping a [c}Rakdos Guildgate[/c] with lots of Nikya of the Old Ways on the battlefield will gain us a lot of black mana.
13 - Cards like Wilderness Reclamation can untap a lot of Rakdos Guildgates.
So it looks like this can get to more than 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 14. There will probably be problems though.
Oh oops, I messed up my renumbering, nice catch.
The early extra replicates are fine, but Mirror image is just so awful, we have to spend a draw on it and we just get 1 copy of a creature we already have. Maybe something like Rallying Roar?
That's a promising sequence, though Dreadhorde butcher can kill pws after a Wrath nova.
Yeah, Mirror Image is pretty bad. I guess Rallying Roar is for the extra mana? That doesn't seem to do much - I think a blue/green instant/sorcery would be better, to keep bumping our TYS count.
Ah, good point about Dreadhorde Butcher. We can get rid of the added planeswalker layer then, and still be at 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 13. But, the [c}Banefire[/c] deck now looks better:
1 - A couple of proliferates animates our Manifold Key, allowing us to make many copies and get a lot of white mana.
2 - Each land we put into play triggers a lot of Evolution Sages and generates a lot of proliferates.
3 - Casting Replicate on an animated land will put a lot of lands onto the battlefield.
4 - Casting Replicate on Clan Guildmage will allow them to animate many lands.
5 - Casting Blood for Bones will allow us to draw Clan Guildmage many times.
6 - Casting Honor the God-Pharaoh or Bladebrand allows us to draw Blood for Bones many times.
7 - Casting Gaea's Blessing and Ionize allows us to draw our card drawer many times at the cost of 2 life.
8 - Each time we resolve an Interplanar Beacon trigger, we gain a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality.
9 - Each time we cast a Planeswalker, we can trigger a bunch of Interplanar Beacons.
9 - We can sacrifice a Planeswalker with Bolas's Citadel, at the cost of 10 life from the opponent.
10 - Each time we damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent, they gain a lot of life.
11 - Each time we cast a Banefire, we can damage a bunch of Imperial Ceratops.
12 - Each time we tap a Sanctum of the Sun, we gain a lot of red mana.
13 - Activating many Teferi, Hero of Dominaria will allow us to untap Sanctum of the Sun many times.
So that should get us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> X -> 13) -> 13.
Okay, so we have to remove Teferi, down to 10 -> 10 -> X -> 13.
Hmm, I'm not sure that Rallying Roar is better than another Stony Strength. Rallying Roar has the bigger effect, but Stony Strength can be cast earlier on with the lower cost, so that will probably up the TYS count at an earlier point than Rallying Roar, which will impact all the larger operations that we do. But, I guess it depends on how the deck plays out.
I must admit, Rallying Roar sounds better, and will probably make a bigger impression on the readers when this thing is eventually written up.
Edit: Oop, we can't add Stony Strength. But there are probably some good blue/green instants/sorceries of the appropriate CMC.
Hmm, is Goblin Chainwhirler safe now? We don't have to worry about it killing Excavation Elephant. it's a lot better than Sarkhan activations. Though being a creature does make it easier to get into play (and copy).
So, getting black mana from Mox Amber seems to kill off the Finale of Eternity deck, at least with Bolas's Citadel. It still looks to be possible with the new start, but would top out at about 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 12, or less than the Sarkhan deck.
The Banefire deck just seems to lose the one layer, but that also drops it to 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 12.
Sarkhan is limited by us needing to destroy it to reactivate it; we can recycle Goblin Chainwhirler just by drawing it, which is at a lower level than opponent damage.
We could try to switch around damage and card draw like we did in the Forerunner of the Empire deck, but that ran into problems because we could kill off Citywatch Sphinx without killing off a Dinosaur, and keep replicating it. It looks like the same thing would happen here.
If we could find a creature that gave us life when we damaged it under the opponent's control, then we could gain life at the expense of the opponent. Or, if we find a card that dealt damage to all creatures and players, that might also work. But then we would need to find another way to gain life for the oppponent.
A card you mentioned before, Star of Extinction, is an interesting possibility. Alas, we're still having problems getting Emergence Zone into play, while still limiting our ability to play lands. If there is a safe way to put in a second Emergency Powers...
Yeah chainwhirler doesn't seem to work, we can exchange it in response to its own trigger and have it kill itself, which is even more infinite than having it die to Wrath.
I'm pretty sure theres a safe way to get a second Emergency powers, but the start where we put in TYS right off the bad means it will have to be pretty narrow.
Looking at a start where we put Emergence zone into play from the first emergency powers:
We have GG floating and 6 other cards in hand.
Stony strength takes us to GGGGG with 5 cards
Another copy gets us to 8 green, with 4 cards left.
hmm
yeah I'm dead ending here.
Samut, more Stony strengh, etc dont seem to work. And all the other useful cards i think of go infinite.
Ok so we need a start that gets us to a second Emergency powers without allowing us to have a TYS in play for it.
Meaning the start has to put something other than TYS in play from the first Emergency power sand also still be able to play it in the second.
Lets try without Grow from the ashes, which looks pretty necessary for the TYS line in the new start to work.
So we start with GG and 7 cards
Let's try putting Gyre Engineer in for free.
Stony strength gets us Samut. G+GGGGU from Gyre Eniginner tap.
Precognition field GG with 3 cards left
Stony strength off the top GGGGGU
replicate off the top for GGGGGGGU
Mox Amber makes r for GGGGGGGUR 2cards
Thousand year storm brings us to GGG with 1 card in hand
Gaea's Blessing shuffles in the graveyard and draws 6 cards
Stony strengths get us to Omniscience mana
Emergency powers and Disdainful stroke.
So even something as simple as a second stony strength is too strong.
I had an idea of maybe casting Gaea's Blessing earlier in the start, and then maybe using Bolt Bend to retarget a Gaea's Blessing copy to the original Gaea's Blessing card. But the fact that the player is also a target messes the Bolt Bend plan up.
I was also wondering if we could use Bond of Insight as a more limited exile card. It still goes infinite if we can manage to get Thousand-Year Storm and Disdainful Stroke it though. If we cast Bond of Insight first, we do get two instants/sorceries for one - not sure if that can increase our efficiency or not.
Putting Bond of Insight aside at the moment, I thought of a couple of improvements to the start. I think we can save an Island by casting Replicate (from our hand) before casting Precogition Field. Also, we can cast Gaea's Blessing at the beginning to fetch Stony Strength, adding some more mana and storm count.
Borrowing from your notation, we have:
X denote amount of green mana (cards in hand) [Storm count]
play land, tap elf, Stony strength the elf for 7UW [1]
Gaea's Blessing to fetch Emergency Powers 6UW [2]
Emergency powers with 1 floating [3]
Addendum: TYS in play (6)
Stony strength the elf for four copies. 4+4+4+4=16 (5) [4]
Samut 12 (6)
Grow from the ashes 9UR (3) [5] (fetch an island and a mountain)
Gyre Engineer 11UR (2)
Replicate 33UUUUUUR (0) [6]
Precognition field 30UUUUUR (0)
L-Gaea's Blessing 29UUUUUR [7]
L-Ionize 28UUUU[8]
and we should have no problem getting started after that.
Edit: No wait, we don't have the cards for an early Gaea's Blessing. The other improvement should work though.
Right, of course we don't have to cast Omniscience before the Gaea's blessing. Nice improvement.
I think we can further improve by switching a leyline for another Stony Strength.
We still get TYS in play with 2 floating, but with an extra storm and a Stony strength still in the deck.
Then we don't need a replicate in hand, and can just go Precognition field into the L-Stony strength to get us up on Blue mana.
It's also another green spell for the stage, even though that doesn't matter much, its better than the leyline, which does essentially noting for us in the stage.
Ooh, I think we can do even better: Just drop the Leyline without adding Stony Strength. Then we can go Stony Strength - Gaea's Blessing - Stony Strength - Emergency Powers, and follow the sequence above, but with one more storm count.
So we've managed to cut two cards, up to 10 -> 10 -> 16 -> 12.
Edit: I suppose we can add another Stony Strength, and remove the Mountain, since we can use the extra card to play Mox Amber instead. It's too bad there are no green untaps with CMC > 2.
No because Gaea's blessing costs the 2 mana we would want to float.
Yeah using Mox Amber and cutting the mountain seems like the best way to use the extra card we have access to in the new line.
Edit: Hmm, we are only using Grow from the ashes to fetch one land, is there another way to turn green into blue but not white or black? because we are currently using 2 card to make one U, easily the most inefficient thing in the deck right now.
Hmm, I don't know. I tried for a bit with putting Gyre Engineer onto the battlefield with Emergency Powers, but it doesn't seem to work out well. Of course, having a cheap way to untap a land is no good.
Hmm, my earlier line with putting Gyre engineer in is pretty close. Editing that.
So we start with GG and 7 cards
Let's try putting Gyre Engineer in for free. 6 cards
Stony strength gets us Samut. G+GGGGU from Gyre Engineer tap.4 cards
Mox Amber gets us a red for TYS with G floating, 3 cards
Stony strength from hand gets +3 copies (SS,EP,SS) storm count now 4 {note, this is with the 3 Leyline opening to have a G after TYS}. 2 cards
that makes 16UUUU with 2 cards in hand.
Precognition field gives us reduplicates.
Mystic forge from hand gives us the key and that gets us the red we need to ionize the Gaea's blessing to get started.
Edit oops i lost track of a card. I think this sequence is one card short of working.
Edit: Instead, we can just replace Tezzeret with some safe blue legend, and also play Karn, the Great Creator to animate Manifold Key, since we have an extra card.
Edit: Hmm, if we switch from Clan Guildmage to Llanowar Scout, we lose a layer for Replicating lands, but we still get 12 layers, so that's pretty good. We can also switch back to Sanctum of the Sun, without any animated lands. We won't get as many exilable cards as we usually do, but it should still be 10+ maybe?
Edit: Okay, another decklist:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Temple Garden
5 Llanowar Elves
6 Island
7 Stony Strength
8 Emergency Powers
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Stony Strength
11 Samut, Tyrant Smasher
12 Grow from the Ashes
13 Island
14 Island
15 Mountain
16 Gyre Engineer
17 Repudiate // Replicate
18 Omniscience
19 Emergence Zone
20 Precognition Field
21 Mox Amber
22 Manifold Key
23 The Antiquities War
24 Mystic Forge
25 Cleansing Nova
26 Cleansing Nova
27 Disdainful Stroke
Rebuild and Reshuffle:
28 Pattern Matcher
29 Gyre Engineer
30 Tragic Poet
31 Tragic Poet
32 Gaea's Blessing
33 Citywatch Sphinx
34 Citywatch Sphinx
Proliferation:
35 Evolution Sage
36 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
37 Llanowar Scout
Drawing:
38 Blood for Bones
39 Bankrupt in Blood
40 Ionize
41 Sarkhan, Dragonsoul
42 Repeated Reverberation
43 Imperial Ceratops
44 Angel of Vitality
45 Vampire Neonate
46 Dowsing Dagger
47 Thorn Lieutenant
Black Mana:
48 Azor's Gateway
Returning from Exile
49 Karn, the Great Creator
Disposable Cards:
50 Repudiate // Replicate
51 Repudiate // Replicate
52 Repudiate // Replicate
53 Quasiduplicate
54 Quasiduplicate
55 Quasiduplicate
56 Quasiduplicate
57 Mirror Image
58 Mirror Image
59 Mirror Image
60 Mirror Image
We can exile the last 11 cards, and also Grow from the Ashes; that's it as far as I can see. That should take us to more than 10 -> 10 -> 13 -> 12.
oh Switcheroo fell out of the deck. (and the last white legend for Mox Amber.) I guess its neutral for disposable cards.
Mirror Image is pretty impotent in this deck, I wonder if there's something better? Whispering Snitch is early lifegain for us and our opponent, but conficts with Dowsing Dagger at 2 cmc. (and is awkward to delay our first surveil, probably not worth it)
OH, and we are forgetting to overkill them again >.< Angrath's Marauders lets the final copy of a Sarkhan activation overkill them.
What is a good white legend? I guess it doesn't really matter; Gideon, the Oathsworn is as good as any, I guess.
I think Gravitic Punch is better than Angrath's Marauders, since it lets us continue the combo with the last Sarkhan activation rather than killing them at that point. (Doesn't really matter, I know)
I thought a bit about the possibility of there being a tighter start that ended in Finale of Revelation or a second Emergency Powers without going infinite, but it does seem hard.
The white legends are pretty meh. Gideon is probably best because he sticks around, and can be copied, legend ruled and exiled forever.
Though maybe Kykar, Wind's fury for easy red?
Yeah Gravitic punch is probably better. Though we do have, as far as I can tell, no reason to go into combat yet? Can we just kill them with combat damage? or do we want to force a big dinosaur fight with Declare dominance?
Hmm yes, just going to combat saves us a card slot. Using the combat for something else would have to gain us something more than another Sanctum of the Sun.
Edit: Hmm, thinking about Bolas's Citadel for a bit, I have an idea for how to get another layer for the Banefire and Finale of Eternity decks. Instead of using Vampire Neonate to take 1 life away from the opponent and gain life immediately, we tap Bolas's Citadel to take 10 life from the opponent, and sacrifice 10 of our permanents, including one or more planeswalkers. We then replay the planeswalkers after animating an Interplanar Beacon, and Replicating many copies of it. So playing a planeswalker triggers many life gains from all the Interplanar Beacons, and we can Replicate many Angel of Vitalitys just before we resolve each one. So that gets us another layer over Vampire Neonate.
Hmm interesting thought about Bolas's Citadel, I remember trying to make interplanar beacon work back when we were trying to chain in an Angrath's Rampage stage. This means that none of our walkers can remove themselves, so no Sarkhan, no Teferi, and, this is the big one, since we proliferate: no big ultimates.
Edit: hmm there has to be something better than Mirror image in that decklist. Because Mirror image does almost nothing at all.
The Saheeli, Sublime artificer trick to get an extra flip of Sanctum of the Sun from making it a Dowsing Dagger?
Oath of teferi to double up on Sarkhan activations?
Edit: so I have:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Temple Garden
5 Llanowar Elves
6 Island
7 Stony Strength
8 Emergency Powers
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Samut, Tyrant Smasher
11 Grow from the Ashes
12 Island
13 Island
14 Mountain
15 Gyre Engineer
16 Repudiate // Replicate
17 Omniscience
18 Emergence Zone
19 Precognition Field
20 Gideon, the Oathsworn
Stage Combo:
21 Mox Amber
22 Manifold Key
23 The Antiquities War
24 Mystic Forge
25 Cleansing Nova
26 Cleansing Nova
27 Disdainful Stroke
Rebuild and Reshuffle:
29 Pattern Matcher
30 Gyre Engineer
31 Tragic Poet
32 Tragic Poet
33 Gaea's Blessing
34 Citywatch Sphinx
35 Citywatch Sphinx
Proliferation:
36 Evolution Sage
37 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
38 Llanowar Scout
Drawing:
39 Blood for Bones
40 Bankrupt in Blood
41 Ionize
42 Sarkhan, Dragonsoul
43 Repeated Reverberation
44 Oath of Teferi
45 Imperial Ceratops
46 Angel of Vitality
47 Vampire Neonate
48 Dowsing Dagger
49 Switcheroo
Black Mana:
50 Azor's Gateway
51 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
Returning from Exile:
52 Karn, the Great Creator
Disposable Cards:
53 Repudiate // Replicate
54 Repudiate // Replicate
55 Repudiate // Replicate
56 Quasiduplicate
57 Quasiduplicate
58 Quasiduplicate
59 Quasiduplicate
Killing them:
60 Gravitic Punch
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer does get another Sanctum of the Sun so we would be one better if we just dinged the opponent to death with Sarkhan, Dragonsoul, but needing Gravitic Punch means we lose the Sanctum of the Sun that we gain. There's not much between the two options, but not having Saheeli and Gravitic Punch means two more slots that we can use to help early on. (Not that we're having much luck finding good cards for that!)
In your deck, you're missing card #28. So there can be 8 cards in the "Disposable Card" section, and we can also exile Grow from the Ashes, Gideon, the Oathsworn, Oath of Teferi, and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. So that's 12 exilable cards, and we get one Sanctum of the Sun from copying Dowsing Dagger for 13 total. So we are at more than 10 -> 10 -> 14 -> 12 at the moment.
Looking at the Finale of Eternity deck with the new Bolas's Citadel combo, it looks like we can get:
1 - A couple of proliferates animates our Manifold Key, allowing us to make many copies and get a lot of white mana.
2 - Each land we put into play triggers a lot of Evolution Sages and generates a lot of proliferates.
3 - Casting Replicate on an animated land will put a lot of lands onto the battlefield.
4 - Casting Replicate on Clan Guildmage will allow them to animate many lands.
5 - Casting Blood for Bones will allow us to draw Clan Guildmage many times.
6 - Casting Honor the God-Pharaoh or Bladebrand allows us to draw Blood for Bones many times.
7 - Casting Gaea's Blessing and Ionize allows us to draw our card drawer many times at the cost of 2 life.
8 - Each time we resolve an Interplanar Beacon trigger, we gain a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality.
9 - Each time we cast a Planeswalker, we can trigger a bunch of Interplanar Beacons.
9 - We can sacrifice a Planeswalker with Bolas's Citadel, at the cost of 10 life from the opponent.
10 - Each time we damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent, they gain a lot of life.
10 - Each time we destroy a Dreadhorde Butcher, we can damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent.
11 - Casting Finale of Eternity allows us to destroy a bunch of Dreadhorde Butchers.
12 - Tapping a [c}Rakdos Guildgate[/c] with lots of Nikya of the Old Ways on the battlefield will gain us a lot of black mana.
13 - Cards like Wilderness Reclamation can untap a lot of Rakdos Guildgates.
So it looks like this can get to more than 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 14. There will probably be problems though.
The early extra replicates are fine, but Mirror image is just so awful, we have to spend a draw on it and we just get 1 copy of a creature we already have. Maybe something like Rallying Roar?
That's a promising sequence, though Dreadhorde butcher can kill pws after a Wrath nova.
Ah, good point about Dreadhorde Butcher. We can get rid of the added planeswalker layer then, and still be at 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 13. But, the [c}Banefire[/c] deck now looks better:
1 - A couple of proliferates animates our Manifold Key, allowing us to make many copies and get a lot of white mana.
2 - Each land we put into play triggers a lot of Evolution Sages and generates a lot of proliferates.
3 - Casting Replicate on an animated land will put a lot of lands onto the battlefield.
4 - Casting Replicate on Clan Guildmage will allow them to animate many lands.
5 - Casting Blood for Bones will allow us to draw Clan Guildmage many times.
6 - Casting Honor the God-Pharaoh or Bladebrand allows us to draw Blood for Bones many times.
7 - Casting Gaea's Blessing and Ionize allows us to draw our card drawer many times at the cost of 2 life.
8 - Each time we resolve an Interplanar Beacon trigger, we gain a lot of life thanks to Angel of Vitality.
9 - Each time we cast a Planeswalker, we can trigger a bunch of Interplanar Beacons.
9 - We can sacrifice a Planeswalker with Bolas's Citadel, at the cost of 10 life from the opponent.
10 - Each time we damage an Imperial Ceratops controlled by the opponent, they gain a lot of life.
11 - Each time we cast a Banefire, we can damage a bunch of Imperial Ceratops.
12 - Each time we tap a Sanctum of the Sun, we gain a lot of red mana.
13 - Activating many Teferi, Hero of Dominaria will allow us to untap Sanctum of the Sun many times.
So that should get us to 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> X -> 13) -> 13.
Edit: Rallying roar untaps all of the animated Keys to get a bunch more white mana.
Hmm, I'm not sure that Rallying Roar is better than another Stony Strength. Rallying Roar has the bigger effect, but Stony Strength can be cast earlier on with the lower cost, so that will probably up the TYS count at an earlier point than Rallying Roar, which will impact all the larger operations that we do. But, I guess it depends on how the deck plays out.
I must admit, Rallying Roar sounds better, and will probably make a bigger impression on the readers when this thing is eventually written up.
Edit: Oop, we can't add Stony Strength. But there are probably some good blue/green instants/sorceries of the appropriate CMC.
At least the main stage combo wasn't that hard to convert from Excavation Elephant to Mystic forge + The Antiquities War.
Edit: Animating Bolas's citadel with The Antiquities war gives us a black legendary creature for Mox Amber, this allows both of the decks with the new combo to just cast Blood for bones off the top to go infinite
The Banefire deck just seems to lose the one layer, but that also drops it to 10 -> 10 -> 7 -> 12.
Sarkhan is limited by us needing to destroy it to reactivate it; we can recycle Goblin Chainwhirler just by drawing it, which is at a lower level than opponent damage.
We could try to switch around damage and card draw like we did in the Forerunner of the Empire deck, but that ran into problems because we could kill off Citywatch Sphinx without killing off a Dinosaur, and keep replicating it. It looks like the same thing would happen here.
If we could find a creature that gave us life when we damaged it under the opponent's control, then we could gain life at the expense of the opponent. Or, if we find a card that dealt damage to all creatures and players, that might also work. But then we would need to find another way to gain life for the oppponent.
A card you mentioned before, Star of Extinction, is an interesting possibility. Alas, we're still having problems getting Emergence Zone into play, while still limiting our ability to play lands. If there is a safe way to put in a second Emergency Powers...
I'm pretty sure theres a safe way to get a second Emergency powers, but the start where we put in TYS right off the bad means it will have to be pretty narrow.
Looking at a start where we put Emergence zone into play from the first emergency powers:
We have GG floating and 6 other cards in hand.
Stony strength takes us to GGGGG with 5 cards
Another copy gets us to 8 green, with 4 cards left.
hmm
yeah I'm dead ending here.
Samut, more Stony strengh, etc dont seem to work. And all the other useful cards i think of go infinite.
Ok so we need a start that gets us to a second Emergency powers without allowing us to have a TYS in play for it.
Meaning the start has to put something other than TYS in play from the first Emergency power sand also still be able to play it in the second.
Lets try without Grow from the ashes, which looks pretty necessary for the TYS line in the new start to work.
So we start with GG and 7 cards
Let's try putting Gyre Engineer in for free.
Stony strength gets us Samut. G+GGGGU from Gyre Eniginner tap.
Precognition field GG with 3 cards left
Stony strength off the top GGGGGU
replicate off the top for GGGGGGGU
Mox Amber makes r for GGGGGGGUR 2cards
Thousand year storm brings us to GGG with 1 card in hand
Gaea's Blessing shuffles in the graveyard and draws 6 cards
Stony strengths get us to Omniscience mana
Emergency powers and Disdainful stroke.
So even something as simple as a second stony strength is too strong.
I had an idea of maybe casting Gaea's Blessing earlier in the start, and then maybe using Bolt Bend to retarget a Gaea's Blessing copy to the original Gaea's Blessing card. But the fact that the player is also a target messes the Bolt Bend plan up.
I was also wondering if we could use Bond of Insight as a more limited exile card. It still goes infinite if we can manage to get Thousand-Year Storm and Disdainful Stroke it though. If we cast Bond of Insight first, we do get two instants/sorceries for one - not sure if that can increase our efficiency or not.
Putting Bond of Insight aside at the moment, I thought of a couple of improvements to the start. I think we can save an Island by casting Replicate (from our hand) before casting Precogition Field. Also, we can cast Gaea's Blessing at the beginning to fetch Stony Strength, adding some more mana and storm count.
Borrowing from your notation, we have:
X denote amount of green mana (cards in hand) [Storm count]
play land, tap elf, Stony strength the elf for 7UW [1]
Gaea's Blessing to fetch Emergency Powers 6UW [2]
Emergency powers with 1 floating [3]
Addendum: TYS in play (6)
Stony strength the elf for four copies. 4+4+4+4=16 (5) [4]
Samut 12 (6)
Grow from the ashes 9UR (3) [5] (fetch an island and a mountain)
Gyre Engineer 11UR (2)
Replicate 33UUUUUUR (0) [6]
Precognition field 30UUUUUR (0)
L-Gaea's Blessing 29UUUUUR [7]
L-Ionize 28UUUU[8]
and we should have no problem getting started after that.
Edit: No wait, we don't have the cards for an early Gaea's Blessing. The other improvement should work though.
Edit again: Well, we do have the cards, we just have to draw Emergency Powers with Gaea's Blessing, not Stony Strength. So we get a bump of 1, not 2 storm count.
I think we can further improve by switching a leyline for another Stony Strength.
We still get TYS in play with 2 floating, but with an extra storm and a Stony strength still in the deck.
Then we don't need a replicate in hand, and can just go Precognition field into the L-Stony strength to get us up on Blue mana.
It's also another green spell for the stage, even though that doesn't matter much, its better than the leyline, which does essentially noting for us in the stage.
So we've managed to cut two cards, up to 10 -> 10 -> 16 -> 12.
Edit: I suppose we can add another Stony Strength, and remove the Mountain, since we can use the extra card to play Mox Amber instead. It's too bad there are no green untaps with CMC > 2.
Yeah using Mox Amber and cutting the mountain seems like the best way to use the extra card we have access to in the new line.
Edit: Hmm, we are only using Grow from the ashes to fetch one land, is there another way to turn green into blue but not white or black? because we are currently using 2 card to make one U, easily the most inefficient thing in the deck right now.
Oath of Teferi goes infinite with Sarkhan.
Hmm, my earlier line with putting Gyre engineer in is pretty close. Editing that.
So we start with GG and 7 cards
Let's try putting Gyre Engineer in for free. 6 cards
Stony strength gets us Samut. G+GGGGU from Gyre Engineer tap.4 cards
Mox Amber gets us a red for TYS with G floating, 3 cards
Stony strength from hand gets +3 copies (SS,EP,SS) storm count now 4 {note, this is with the 3 Leyline opening to have a G after TYS}. 2 cards
that makes 16UUUU with 2 cards in hand.
Precognition field gives us reduplicates.
Mystic forge from hand gives us the key and that gets us the red we need to ionize the Gaea's blessing to get started.
Edit oops i lost track of a card. I think this sequence is one card short of working.
Here's another possibility:
Thousand-Year Storm - GG - 6 cards, 3 storm
Stony Strength - 13G - 5 cards, 4 storm
Stony Strength - 27G - 4 cards 5 storm
Mystic Forge - 23G - 3 cards, 5 storm
L - Thran Temporal Gateway - 19G - 3 cards, 5 storm
Tezzeret, Cruel Machinist - 15G - 2 cards, 5 storm
L - Mox Amber - 15G, U - 2 cards, 5 storm
L - Manifold Key - 13G, 2U - 2 cards, 5 storm
activate Tezzeret to animate Manifold Key
Precognition Field 10G, 1U - 1 card, 5 storm
L - Quasiduplicate - 8G, 3U, 3R - 1 card, 6 storm
and we can get started quite easily. But, we are just replacing Grow from the Ashes + Island with Thran Temporal Gateway and Tezzeret, Cruel Machinist, so we just trade one exilable card + one nonexilable card for the same.
Good thought about Thran Temporal Gateway though.
Thousand-Year Storm - GG - 6 cards, 3 storm
Stony Strength - 13G - 5 cards, 4 storm
Mystic Forge - 9G - 4 cards, 4 storm
L - Thran Temporal Gateway - 5G - 4 cards, 4 storm
Kykar, Wind's Fury - G - 3 cards, 4 storm
L - Mox Amber - GUR - 3 cards, 4 storm
Stony Strength - 15G,U,RR - 2 cards, 5 storm
L - Manifold Key - 13G,UU,RRR - 2 cards, 5 storm
Precognition Field - 10G,U,4R - 1 card, 5 storm
and we have plenty to get started. This replaces Grow from the Ashes, Island, and Gideon, the Oathsworn with Kykar, Wind's Fury, but the number of exilable cards remains the same. Still, it looks like this might be better than what we had before.
Edit: Whoops, this also requires Thran Temporal Gateway.
Edit: Instead, we can just replace Tezzeret with some safe blue legend, and also play Karn, the Great Creator to animate Manifold Key, since we have an extra card.