ugh yeah, going back to Torch courier, and with scarce red too... looks tricky.
We also have to be careful because we don't have to stifle the trigger, and if we could go infinite by letting our opponent sac a creature, we will.
Adding Role Reversal back in also restricts our opponents deck to not have a mountain or a swamp.
Putting Unholy Indenture on Llanowar Scout too get another landfall trigger looks bad too. I think we can fix it by cutting an Evolution sage as well, so we can only save one of them through the wraths.
Stony Strength - 13G, 5 cards, 4 storm
Grow from the Ashes - 10G, 4 cards, 5 storm
*fetch two swamps, 10G,2B
Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage - 8G,1B - 3 cards
*discard Gyre Engineer - 8G,1B - 2 cards
Bond of Revival - 7G,1U - 1 card
Precognition Field 4G - 0 cards
Edit: I think we are currently okay with opponent lands. The opponent can put one land into play, and we can take control of it, but then all we can do is Multani it back to their hand, and I believe it is stuck there.
Hmm, Bolas's citadel gives us a 6 mana artifact so we can go infinite with Karn and Azor's Gateway exiling 0,1,2,4,6. Can we cut Dowsing Dagger for Thorn Lieutenant?
With only one Repudiate // replicate we can't stifle the dragon and replicate on the same reshuffle. (We also aren't forced to do stifle if them saccing a guy goes infinite.)
I think there's something silly going on with Unholy Indenture, World Shaper, Evolution sage, and the stage combo, but I haven't found the broken line yet. There are a lot more possible lines now.
I think we only need the one Repudiate // Replicate, at least as far as the Dragon is concerned; we Repudiate the Dragon when it comes on the battlefield, we cast Unholy Indenture on it and resolve a Role Reversal to transfer Unholy Indenture to the enemy, and then cast a Wrath Nova to destroy all creatures. That will get us reshuffles, so we get Repudiate // Replicate back.
So for layers with this version we have something like:
animate key with proliferates
make many proliferates with landfall make 1 landfall with worldshaper trigger.
Get a bunch of worldshaper triggers with wrath.
Make Worldshapers with their Demanding Dragon trigger + Pattern matcher.
Give them many demanding dragon triggers with Unholy Indenture+role Reversal
Draw Role Reversal with each copy of Honor the God-Pharaoh.
Draw that repeatedly with Gaea's Blessing+Ionize lets us recast Gaea's Blessing.
Gain life with Angel of Vitality +Vampire Neonate.
Give them life with Angel of vitality + Ceratops trigger
Give them many Ceratops triggers with Banefire
Make lots of red with Sanctum of the sun and
untap Sanctum of the sun with Teferi + Repeated Reverberation.
Teferi is already a white legend so we probably don't need Gideon. Looks like we need Bolt Bend to keep the Banefires from fizzling. So that's even.
Also spotted an infinite with
Spark double+Teferi+Repeated Reverberation. (Teferi draws Honor the God pharaoh, Repeated reverberation + spark double Teferi tucks itself and Teferi, (and say, mox and key) Honor the God pharaoh draws both and we have a bunch of draw triggers for free.)
Good point about Spark double+Teferi+Repeated Reverberation. We don't really need Repeated Reverberation, since we can activate Teferi many times, so that is the one to go. Bolt Bend can be used to get many usable copies of Banefire.
Extra copies of TYS are not exileable because they share CMC with Bolas's Citadel.
We are also really bad at making early storm now. Not unworkably bad, but it is noticeable. Now that 2 cmc is exileable maybe Gift of growth will help?
Is Bolas's Citadel saccing teferi really safe? It looks like we still need to spend a red to make them gain life, so it doesn't appear to be an obvious infinite.
More pressingly, I think the actual line for the proliferate through to Honor the God Pharaoh stages is a bit trickier than the stage outline makes it look like. We need to save either worldshaper or Evolution Sage through the entire stage with Unholy Indenture, but have both in play for each dragon trigger. Also we can't let it go infinite with Wayward Swordtooth letting us play a land at sorcery speed. (oh and we need to swap the shock and basic again to play nice with the Swordtooth)
We can replace one of the Stony Strengths with a Gift of Growth, and get another exilable card, and we can add more Gift of Growths if it helps us get started. Would more Repudiate // Replicates be better?
I'll think more about how the early layers work; right now, it's looking pretty good.
Lotus Field looks like a good solution. We might have to sacrifice some surveil triggers to just mill lands right before a Worldshaper trigger, but that's cheap.
I think a second Replicate would probably be sufficient to go off with, though maybe using the creature flash Vivien wrath combo is better?
Your start uses most of the Emergency powers cards. Bolas's Citadel, Stony, Stony(/Gift), Omniscience, TYS is 5 of the 7. Fortunately we have exactly enough cards to still cast Honor the God Pharaoh with a storm of 6. However, we don't have flash yet, and our Torch courier is in the yard so haste will be out of reach until we reshuffle.
So using those 12 cards as
Precognition Field
Mystic forge (finding Mox)
Karn
Key
Teferi
Vivien
Replicate
Citywatch Sphinx
Militia Bugler
Yarok?
Rallying Roar?
Nova?
We also get Teferi and Vivien activations.
lets us make white with Replicate on the karn-animated key to get to ~8 white and be able to wrath.
We can actually use the ministage a lot better now, as we can get both Citywatch sphinx and Gyre Engineer each wrath.
Wrath kills them and reshuffle happens
Play sphinx and Yarok from hand. Pattern matcher gets yarok and sphinx. Bugler gets Torch courier and Spark double. Spark double as Bugler gets Bugler and Gyre engineer.
Actually, this may be moot as I don't think we need a second Yarok?
Hmm, you're right, we don't. Do we need two Demanding Dragons? I guess he's kind of stuck under the opponent's control, so we can't sacrifice it or otherwise get rid of it without a Wrath Nova, and that would get rid of all other copies of Demanding Dragon. So I guess we do need two of those.
Edit: Hmm, I thought maybe I could get another layer using Cavalier of Night, which can fetch say a Llanowar Scout when it dies. Unfortunately, we can use the ETB trigger of a token copy of Cavalier of Night to sacrifice the original, then bring it back to our hand using Pattern Matcher. Similarly for Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep, since we can use a token copy to Legend rule the original. Are there any other creature cards that can recycle other creatures, but not themselves?
Edit: Rakdos, the Showstopper also has a very nice ability, but again it is a Legendary creature. Wakening Sun's Avatar isn't Legendary and doesn't seem to have any way to recycle itself, but I don't see how to use "destroy all non-Dinosaur creatures" to recycle other creatures.
Edit: Hmm, I think that we may be able to get by with just one Demanding Dragon after all. After Demanding Dragon comes onto the battlefield on the opponent's side, we get a bunch of sacrifice triggers, and we use one of those triggers to sacrifice World Shaper as normal, and we also use another one to sacrifice Evolution Sage. We then use a third to sacrifice Citywatch Sphinx, shuffling all three creatures into the library, so that we can use Pattern Matcher to put them back into our hand. Doing this gives us the opportunity to cast Unholy Indenture on Demanding Dragon. When we next cast a Wrath Nova, Demanding Dragon will come back onto the battlefield on our side. (We will of course Repudiate its ETB trigger.) We recast World Shaper and Citywatch Sphinx, and Replicate copies of both plus Demanding Dragon. We can use sacrifice triggers on all three (Citywatch Sphinx last of course) and again reshuffle them back into the library, and use Pattern Matcher again to bring them back to our hand. We now have Demanding Dragon in our hand, to be recast the next time we need to use Role Reversal to bring it over to the opponent's control.
Edit: I think we can save another card, by putting in Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. Since Teshar is legendary, we can make it so that we have it in our hand after a Wrath Nova. After the Wrath Nova, we can surveil a couple of times, so that we reshuffle, and also put Militia Bugler into our graveyard. After that, we can play Teshar. Then, we cast Replicate, and use a copy to copy Teshar, and Legend Rule the original Teshar into the graveyard. We then cast Pattern Matcher from the library, triggering Teshar, so that we bring Militia Buglar back onto the battlefield. We can then use some Replicate copies to copy Militia Bugler a few times, so that we can bring all of power 2 or lower creatures to our hand, including Teshar. (or we could use Pattern Matcher for Teshar)
If we need to retrieve Evolution Sage, we can play another artifact (say Mox Amber) at some point to trigger Teshar again and retrieve Evolution Sage. Of course, we have been counting on Evolution Sage to occupy our Unholy Indenture, so that we couldn't use it on World Shaper. So, we will cut a Citywatch Sphinx, and now we need to cast Unholy Indenture on Citywatch Sphinx before every Wrath Nova, or else Citywatch Sphinx will get stuck in our graveyard, along with our ability to reshuffle.
Hmm, so the question is, can this change work with our need to cast Unholy Indenture on Demanding Dragon? So let's say we have a Role Reversal waiting on the stack, and that we have just resolved a bunch of Wrath Novas, so that we have a refreshed library. One thing different though: We used a sacrifice trigger to destroy the original Citywatch Sphinx prior to this, and then reshuffled and brought it back to our hand with Pattern Matcher. We also kept Tragic Poet and Torch Courier in our hand. We cast Demanding Dragon, and Repudiate its ETB trigger. We cast Unholy Indenture on it. We now cast Wrath Nova, sending our creatures to the graveyard. Unholy Indenture triggers. Before we resolve the trigger, we play Citywatch Sphinx, Tragic Poet and Torch Courier. We sacrifice Torch Courier to give Tragic Poet haste, and then sacrifice the Poet to bring back Unholy Indenture, which we cast on Citywatch Sphinx. We now cast the second Cleansing Nova, which we make a Wrath Nova again. This will trigger Citywatch Sphinx and Unholy Indenture again. We get a reshuffle, and Citywatch Sphinx comes back onto the battlefield. At this point I think we can continue the combo in a straightforward manner. So we have managed to use Unholy Indenture on both the Dragon and Citywatch Sphinx.
After we finally resolve the Demanding Dragon ETB trigger, we then get a bunch of sacrifice creatures on the stack. We can use two to sacrifice World Shaper and Citywatch Sphinx[/c]; the latter reshuffles the deck, and we can use Pattern Matcher to bring both creatures back to our hand. If we need to do the same for Tragic Poet and Torch Courier to get them back in our hand, we may do so. We cast Unholy Indenture on the Demanding Dragon, and then do the same as above; we cast a Wrath Nova without putting Citywatch Sphinx on the battlefield, destroying Demanding Dragon and triggering the Unholy Indenture. Before we resolve the trigger, we put Citywatch Sphinx into play and use the Tragic Poet and Torch Courier to fetch the Unholy Indenture and put it on the Citywatch Sphinx. We then cast a second Wrath Nova, allowing us to reshuffle, and Citywatch Sphinx comes back onto the battlefield. Later, we resolve the Unholy Indeture trigger on the Dragon, and it comes back onto the battlefield, and we do the same as above to recycle it back to our hand.
Hmm, interesting line, that does seem to work, and forcing us to keep our Unholy Indenture on the sphinx in the stage definitely eliminates any of the tricky infinites I was trying to make work. (an unenchanted Sphinx gets stuck in the library after a wrath, which is still expensive enough to prevent infinites)
Teshar is also pretty smart, saving a card while making it easier to rebuild poets, Engineers and Torch couriers will be very convenient.
I still think the timing is a bit awkward and complex, we have to track our cards and the stack pretty carefully. For instance, how are we getting sacrifice trigger to get the Sphinx into hand now? Once we start the stage combo we need sphinx in play the whole time, and can't get it in hand with pattern matcher. So we actually need to spend a draw whenever we start this layer (Convenient that Honor The God Pharaoh draws 2 at a time).
Another issue is that to have a role reversal waiting for us on the stack, right after resolving a wrath, we need to have wrathed in response to the TYS trigger for Role Reversal, or else the targeted aura will be invalid. We also can't counter Role Reversal, so the real Role Reversal has to have been on the stack for a while.
These two together are a bit tricky to simultaneously satisfy, but once we know we need to do it we can.
I haven't verified everything, but making sure we can give them all the Yaroks at the right time looks a bit difficult too (especially with the role reversal being stuck on the stack for a while). Edit: Hmm, maybe impossible currently? We need to respond to the Unholy Indenture trigger with Role Reversal, but it was just on the stack so it can't be in our hand. Blunt fix is a second copy of Role Reversal.
This is very challenging to execute properly, with lots of setup and subtlety, and even some of the setup needs setup. This is easily the most complex layer extension.
The full line for this layer needs to start with resolving an Honor the God Pharaoh to draw Role Reversal (and Sphinx?) and get to the point where they have X dragon triggers. Turning a few of those into X worldshaper triggers is also puzzling, but much easier. Turning the worldshaper triggers into landfall/proliferate triggers is very easy.
Fortunately, we can use Vicious Rumors instead. Black mana is cheap in this deck and card draw is also cheap enough in other decks, and we can stifle the TYS trigger to not kill them (or cast it when there is no TYS in play)
I think we can go back to one of your ideas, and replace Switcheroo, Baffling End, and Thorn Lieutenant with Crafty Cutpurse. So we just bring the Cutpurse onto the battlefield onto the opponent's control, and we can Replicate our own creatures to give the opponent tokens. Of course, we need to recycle the Cutpurse and put it back under our control in order to continue the combo.
We will need to think through the various lines, as they are still quite complex.
Yeah Makes me glad you found the Dragon lines, would not have spotted this otherwise.
hmm, that goes infinite.
Example infinite: we have Dragon, a token sphinx, and the real sphinx in play, they have the crafty Cutpurse trigger. We can replicate the dragon, sacrifice the real sphinx to reshuffle, Pattern match the real sphinx, sac the pattern matcher to the dragon, and repeat, getting more and more Gift of Growths.
Hmm, so we have a serious problem then. I was looking for a way we could get a lot of sacrifice triggers without Spark Double, but I didn't see a way. Something that sacrifices or returns a creature when they die might be better, since then we have to Wrath Nova to create the triggers, so perhaps the Crafty Cutpurse idea could work.
The issue with crafty cutpurse is that they get whatever etb trigger while the next replicate is still on the stack, so we either need to swap the lock back and forth in between each one to be able to go off efficiently, or we have to be locked out of making tokens for all of the ETB triggers. Neither one seems very tenable.
If we cut spark double the only other way to make nonlegendary tokens is Helm of the Host but it seems very difficult to make proper use of that, especially without a way to make it indestructible.
Looks like my original plan with crafty cutpurse was to make red expensive and use crafty cutpurse + Grasping Thrull + Angel of Vitality to gain a bunch of life, reshuffling by giving them Nezahal, primal tide + Psychic Corrosion + refilling their deck with discard + Gaea's Blessing + Ionize. And having the whole thing be limited by raw mana as we can't make token copies of Gyre Engineer.
Unfortunately, that plan is currently infinite with Stony Strength making Gyre Engineer mana cheap. The only way to even get started turn 2 that doesn't use stony strength is 4xleyline elf land land emergency powers with 0 floating. Which is not a good position to start from, especially if red legends are off limits.
We also have to be careful because we don't have to stifle the trigger, and if we could go infinite by letting our opponent sac a creature, we will.
Adding Role Reversal back in also restricts our opponents deck to not have a mountain or a swamp.
Putting Unholy Indenture on Llanowar Scout too get another landfall trigger looks bad too. I think we can fix it by cutting an Evolution sage as well, so we can only save one of them through the wraths.
An early failed attempt at the start:
Addendum - Thousand Year Storm
Stony Strength - 13G, 5 cards, 4 storm
Grow from the Ashes - 10G, 4 cards, 5 storm
*fetch two swamps, 10G,2B
Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage - 8G,1B - 3 cards
*discard Gyre Engineer - 8G,1B - 2 cards
Bond of Revival - 7G,1U - 1 card
Precognition Field 4G - 0 cards
Edit: I think we are currently okay with opponent lands. The opponent can put one land into play, and we can take control of it, but then all we can do is Multani it back to their hand, and I believe it is stuck there.
Edit: It looks like Bolas's Citadel is the easiest way to get started with expensive red mana. Then we can spend four life to put Gyre Engineer and Torch Courier into play, then two Stony Strengths will allow us to cast Omniscience.
Quick deck assembly:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Breeding Pool
4 Llanowar Elves
5 Plains
6 Stony Strength
7 Stony Strength
8 Emergency Powers
9 Bolas's Citadel
10 Gyre Engineer
11 Torch Courier
12 Omniscience
13 Thousand-Year Storm
14 Mystic Forge
15 Precongnition Field
16 Emergence Zone
Stage Combo:
17 The Antiquities War
18 Mystic Forge
19 Mox Amber
20 Manifold Key
21 Cleansing Nova
22 Cleansing Nova
23 Disdainful Stroke
24 Pattern Matcher
25 Militia Bugler
26 Militia Bugler
27 Tragic Poet
28 Gaea's Blessing
29 Citywatch Sphinx
30 Citywatch Sphinx
31 Repudiate // Replicate
Proliferation:
32 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
33 World Shaper
34 Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
35 Mind Rot
Recycling World Shaper:
36 Demanding Dragon
37 Demanding Dragon
38 Unholy Indenture
39 Captive Audience
40 Role Reversal
41 Yarok, the Desecrated
42 Yarok, the Desecrated
43 Spark Double
44 Honor the God-Pharaoh
45 Ionize
Life Gain:
46 Banefire
47 Repeated Reverberation
48 Imperial Ceratops
49 Angel of Vitality
50 Vampire Neonate
51 Dowsing Dagger
Black Mana:
52 Azor's Gateway
Returning from Exile:
53 Karn, the Great Creator
White Legend:
54 Gideon, the Oathsworn
Disposable Cards:
55 Nexus of Fate
56 Rallying Roar
57 Rallying Roar
58 Rallying Roar
59 Thousand-Year Storm
60 Thousand-Year Storm
With only one Repudiate // replicate we can't stifle the dragon and replicate on the same reshuffle. (We also aren't forced to do stifle if them saccing a guy goes infinite.)
I think there's something silly going on with Unholy Indenture, World Shaper, Evolution sage, and the stage combo, but I haven't found the broken line yet. There are a lot more possible lines now.
I think we only need the one Repudiate // Replicate, at least as far as the Dragon is concerned; we Repudiate the Dragon when it comes on the battlefield, we cast Unholy Indenture on it and resolve a Role Reversal to transfer Unholy Indenture to the enemy, and then cast a Wrath Nova to destroy all creatures. That will get us reshuffles, so we get Repudiate // Replicate back.
Also, I accidentally put in two Mystic Forges.
Edit: I also forgot Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, which is pretty important.
animate key with proliferates
make many proliferates with landfall make 1 landfall with worldshaper trigger.
Get a bunch of worldshaper triggers with wrath.
Make Worldshapers with their Demanding Dragon trigger + Pattern matcher.
Give them many demanding dragon triggers with Unholy Indenture+role Reversal
Draw Role Reversal with each copy of Honor the God-Pharaoh.
Draw that repeatedly with Gaea's Blessing+Ionize lets us recast Gaea's Blessing.
Gain life with Angel of Vitality +Vampire Neonate.
Give them life with Angel of vitality + Ceratops trigger
Give them many Ceratops triggers with Banefire
Make lots of red with Sanctum of the sun and
untap Sanctum of the sun with Teferi + Repeated Reverberation.
Teferi is already a white legend so we probably don't need Gideon. Looks like we need Bolt Bend to keep the Banefires from fizzling. So that's even.
Also spotted an infinite with
Spark double+Teferi+Repeated Reverberation. (Teferi draws Honor the God pharaoh, Repeated reverberation + spark double Teferi tucks itself and Teferi, (and say, mox and key) Honor the God pharaoh draws both and we have a bunch of draw triggers for free.)
Good point about Spark double+Teferi+Repeated Reverberation. We don't really need Repeated Reverberation, since we can activate Teferi many times, so that is the one to go. Bolt Bend can be used to get many usable copies of Banefire.
So we currently have:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Breeding Pool
4 Llanowar Elves
5 Plains
6 Stony Strength
7 Stony Strength
8 Emergency Powers
9 Bolas's Citadel
10 Gyre Engineer
11 Torch Courier
12 Omniscience
13 Thousand-Year Storm
14 Mystic Forge
15 Precongnition Field
16 Emergence Zone
Stage Combo:
17 The Antiquities War
18 Mox Amber
19 Manifold Key
20 Cleansing Nova
21 Cleansing Nova
22 Disdainful Stroke
23 Pattern Matcher
24 Militia Bugler
25 Militia Bugler
26 Tragic Poet
27 Gaea's Blessing
28 Citywatch Sphinx
29 Citywatch Sphinx
30 Repudiate // Replicate
Proliferation:
31 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
32 World Shaper
33 Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
34 Mind Rot
Recycling World Shaper:
35 Demanding Dragon
36 Demanding Dragon
37 Unholy Indenture
38 Captive Audience
39 Role Reversal
40 Yarok, the Desecrated
41 Yarok, the Desecrated
42 Spark Double
43 Honor the God-Pharaoh
44 Ionize
Life Gain:
45 Banefire
46 Bolt Bend
47 Imperial Ceratops
48 Angel of Vitality
49 Vampire Neonate
50 Baffling End
51 Thorn Lieutenant
Black Mana:
52 Azor's Gateway
Returning from Exile:
53 Karn, the Great Creator
Untapping Lands:
54 Teferi, Hero of Domaninaria
Playing Emergence Zone:
55 Wayward Swordtooth
Disposable Cards:
56 Nexus of Fate
57 Rallying Roar
58 Rallying Roar
59 Thousand-Year Storm
60 Thousand-Year Storm
We are also really bad at making early storm now. Not unworkably bad, but it is noticeable. Now that 2 cmc is exileable maybe Gift of growth will help?
Is Bolas's Citadel saccing teferi really safe? It looks like we still need to spend a red to make them gain life, so it doesn't appear to be an obvious infinite.
More pressingly, I think the actual line for the proliferate through to Honor the God Pharaoh stages is a bit trickier than the stage outline makes it look like. We need to save either worldshaper or Evolution Sage through the entire stage with Unholy Indenture, but have both in play for each dragon trigger. Also we can't let it go infinite with Wayward Swordtooth letting us play a land at sorcery speed. (oh and we need to swap the shock and basic again to play nice with the Swordtooth)
We can replace one of the Stony Strengths with a Gift of Growth, and get another exilable card, and we can add more Gift of Growths if it helps us get started. Would more Repudiate // Replicates be better?
I'll think more about how the early layers work; right now, it's looking pretty good.
I think a second Replicate would probably be sufficient to go off with, though maybe using the creature flash Vivien wrath combo is better?
Your start uses most of the Emergency powers cards. Bolas's Citadel, Stony, Stony(/Gift), Omniscience, TYS is 5 of the 7. Fortunately we have exactly enough cards to still cast Honor the God Pharaoh with a storm of 6. However, we don't have flash yet, and our Torch courier is in the yard so haste will be out of reach until we reshuffle.
So using those 12 cards as
Precognition Field
Mystic forge (finding Mox)
Karn
Key
Teferi
Vivien
Replicate
Citywatch Sphinx
Militia Bugler
Yarok?
Rallying Roar?
Nova?
We also get Teferi and Vivien activations.
lets us make white with Replicate on the karn-animated key to get to ~8 white and be able to wrath.
We can actually use the ministage a lot better now, as we can get both Citywatch sphinx and Gyre Engineer each wrath.
Wrath kills them and reshuffle happens
Play sphinx and Yarok from hand. Pattern matcher gets yarok and sphinx. Bugler gets Torch courier and Spark double. Spark double as Bugler gets Bugler and Gyre engineer.
Actually, this may be moot as I don't think we need a second Yarok?
Update:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Breeding Pool
4 Llanowar Elves
5 Plains
6 Stony Strength
7 Gift of Growth
8 Emergency Powers
9 Bolas's Citadel
10 Gyre Engineer
11 Torch Courier
12 Omniscience
13 Thousand-Year Storm
14 Mystic Forge
15 Precongnition Field
16 Emergence Zone
Stage Combo:
17 The Antiquities War
18 Mox Amber
19 Manifold Key
20 Cleansing Nova
21 Cleansing Nova
22 Disdainful Stroke
23 Pattern Matcher
24 Militia Bugler
25 Militia Bugler
26 Tragic Poet
27 Gaea's Blessing
28 Citywatch Sphinx
29 Citywatch Sphinx
30 Repudiate // Replicate
Proliferation:
31 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
32 World Shaper
33 Lotus Field
Recycling World Shaper:
34 Demanding Dragon
35 Demanding Dragon
36 Unholy Indenture
37 Captive Audience
38 Role Reversal
39 Yarok, the Desecrated
40 Spark Double
Drawing:
41 Honor the God-Pharaoh
42 Ionize
43 Banefire
44 Bolt Bend
45 Imperial Ceratops
46 Angel of Vitality
47 Vampire Neonate
48 Baffling End
49 Thorn Lieutenant
Black Mana:
50 Azor's Gateway
Returning from Exile:
51 Karn, the Great Creator
Untapping Lands:
52 Teferi, Hero of Domaninaria
Playing Emergence Zone:
53 Wayward Swordtooth
Disposable Cards:
54 Nexus of Fate
55 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
56 Repudiate // Replicate
57 Rallying Roar
58 Rallying Roar
59 Rallying Roar
60 Rallying Roar
Edit: Hmm, I thought maybe I could get another layer using Cavalier of Night, which can fetch say a Llanowar Scout when it dies. Unfortunately, we can use the ETB trigger of a token copy of Cavalier of Night to sacrifice the original, then bring it back to our hand using Pattern Matcher. Similarly for Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep, since we can use a token copy to Legend rule the original. Are there any other creature cards that can recycle other creatures, but not themselves?
Edit: Rakdos, the Showstopper also has a very nice ability, but again it is a Legendary creature. Wakening Sun's Avatar isn't Legendary and doesn't seem to have any way to recycle itself, but I don't see how to use "destroy all non-Dinosaur creatures" to recycle other creatures.
Edit: Hmm, I think that we may be able to get by with just one Demanding Dragon after all. After Demanding Dragon comes onto the battlefield on the opponent's side, we get a bunch of sacrifice triggers, and we use one of those triggers to sacrifice World Shaper as normal, and we also use another one to sacrifice Evolution Sage. We then use a third to sacrifice Citywatch Sphinx, shuffling all three creatures into the library, so that we can use Pattern Matcher to put them back into our hand. Doing this gives us the opportunity to cast Unholy Indenture on Demanding Dragon. When we next cast a Wrath Nova, Demanding Dragon will come back onto the battlefield on our side. (We will of course Repudiate its ETB trigger.) We recast World Shaper and Citywatch Sphinx, and Replicate copies of both plus Demanding Dragon. We can use sacrifice triggers on all three (Citywatch Sphinx last of course) and again reshuffle them back into the library, and use Pattern Matcher again to bring them back to our hand. We now have Demanding Dragon in our hand, to be recast the next time we need to use Role Reversal to bring it over to the opponent's control.
Edit: I think we can save another card, by putting in Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. Since Teshar is legendary, we can make it so that we have it in our hand after a Wrath Nova. After the Wrath Nova, we can surveil a couple of times, so that we reshuffle, and also put Militia Bugler into our graveyard. After that, we can play Teshar. Then, we cast Replicate, and use a copy to copy Teshar, and Legend Rule the original Teshar into the graveyard. We then cast Pattern Matcher from the library, triggering Teshar, so that we bring Militia Buglar back onto the battlefield. We can then use some Replicate copies to copy Militia Bugler a few times, so that we can bring all of power 2 or lower creatures to our hand, including Teshar. (or we could use Pattern Matcher for Teshar)
If we need to retrieve Evolution Sage, we can play another artifact (say Mox Amber) at some point to trigger Teshar again and retrieve Evolution Sage. Of course, we have been counting on Evolution Sage to occupy our Unholy Indenture, so that we couldn't use it on World Shaper. So, we will cut a Citywatch Sphinx, and now we need to cast Unholy Indenture on Citywatch Sphinx before every Wrath Nova, or else Citywatch Sphinx will get stuck in our graveyard, along with our ability to reshuffle.
Hmm, so the question is, can this change work with our need to cast Unholy Indenture on Demanding Dragon? So let's say we have a Role Reversal waiting on the stack, and that we have just resolved a bunch of Wrath Novas, so that we have a refreshed library. One thing different though: We used a sacrifice trigger to destroy the original Citywatch Sphinx prior to this, and then reshuffled and brought it back to our hand with Pattern Matcher. We also kept Tragic Poet and Torch Courier in our hand. We cast Demanding Dragon, and Repudiate its ETB trigger. We cast Unholy Indenture on it. We now cast Wrath Nova, sending our creatures to the graveyard. Unholy Indenture triggers. Before we resolve the trigger, we play Citywatch Sphinx, Tragic Poet and Torch Courier. We sacrifice Torch Courier to give Tragic Poet haste, and then sacrifice the Poet to bring back Unholy Indenture, which we cast on Citywatch Sphinx. We now cast the second Cleansing Nova, which we make a Wrath Nova again. This will trigger Citywatch Sphinx and Unholy Indenture again. We get a reshuffle, and Citywatch Sphinx comes back onto the battlefield. At this point I think we can continue the combo in a straightforward manner. So we have managed to use Unholy Indenture on both the Dragon and Citywatch Sphinx.
After we finally resolve the Demanding Dragon ETB trigger, we then get a bunch of sacrifice creatures on the stack. We can use two to sacrifice World Shaper and Citywatch Sphinx[/c]; the latter reshuffles the deck, and we can use Pattern Matcher to bring both creatures back to our hand. If we need to do the same for Tragic Poet and Torch Courier to get them back in our hand, we may do so. We cast Unholy Indenture on the Demanding Dragon, and then do the same as above; we cast a Wrath Nova without putting Citywatch Sphinx on the battlefield, destroying Demanding Dragon and triggering the Unholy Indenture. Before we resolve the trigger, we put Citywatch Sphinx into play and use the Tragic Poet and Torch Courier to fetch the Unholy Indenture and put it on the Citywatch Sphinx. We then cast a second Wrath Nova, allowing us to reshuffle, and Citywatch Sphinx comes back onto the battlefield. Later, we resolve the Unholy Indeture trigger on the Dragon, and it comes back onto the battlefield, and we do the same as above to recycle it back to our hand.
So, I think this works!
Teshar is also pretty smart, saving a card while making it easier to rebuild poets, Engineers and Torch couriers will be very convenient.
I still think the timing is a bit awkward and complex, we have to track our cards and the stack pretty carefully. For instance, how are we getting sacrifice trigger to get the Sphinx into hand now? Once we start the stage combo we need sphinx in play the whole time, and can't get it in hand with pattern matcher. So we actually need to spend a draw whenever we start this layer (Convenient that Honor The God Pharaoh draws 2 at a time).
Another issue is that to have a role reversal waiting for us on the stack, right after resolving a wrath, we need to have wrathed in response to the TYS trigger for Role Reversal, or else the targeted aura will be invalid. We also can't counter Role Reversal, so the real Role Reversal has to have been on the stack for a while.
These two together are a bit tricky to simultaneously satisfy, but once we know we need to do it we can.
I haven't verified everything, but making sure we can give them all the Yaroks at the right time looks a bit difficult too (especially with the role reversal being stuck on the stack for a while). Edit: Hmm, maybe impossible currently? We need to respond to the Unholy Indenture trigger with Role Reversal, but it was just on the stack so it can't be in our hand. Blunt fix is a second copy of Role Reversal.
This is very challenging to execute properly, with lots of setup and subtlety, and even some of the setup needs setup. This is easily the most complex layer extension.
The full line for this layer needs to start with resolving an Honor the God Pharaoh to draw Role Reversal (and Sphinx?) and get to the point where they have X dragon triggers. Turning a few of those into X worldshaper triggers is also puzzling, but much easier. Turning the worldshaper triggers into landfall/proliferate triggers is very easy.
Yeah, to give them Yaroks we need to add something, I believe a Switcheroo will work best.
It looks like Doublecast is better than Bolt Bend.
We can give them hasty Vampire Neonate+Gyre Engineer and they can steal life from us for cheap.
This also DQs a LOT of our previous decks.
Fortunately, we can use Vicious Rumors instead. Black mana is cheap in this deck and card draw is also cheap enough in other decks, and we can stifle the TYS trigger to not kill them (or cast it when there is no TYS in play)
I think we can go back to one of your ideas, and replace Switcheroo, Baffling End, and Thorn Lieutenant with Crafty Cutpurse. So we just bring the Cutpurse onto the battlefield onto the opponent's control, and we can Replicate our own creatures to give the opponent tokens. Of course, we need to recycle the Cutpurse and put it back under our control in order to continue the combo.
We will need to think through the various lines, as they are still quite complex.
hmm, that goes infinite.
Example infinite: we have Dragon, a token sphinx, and the real sphinx in play, they have the crafty Cutpurse trigger. We can replicate the dragon, sacrifice the real sphinx to reshuffle, Pattern match the real sphinx, sac the pattern matcher to the dragon, and repeat, getting more and more Gift of Growths.
So, we currently stand at:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Breeding Pool
4 Llanowar Elves
5 Plains
6 Stony Strength
7 Gift of Growth
8 Emergency Powers
9 Bolas's Citadel
10 Gyre Engineer
11 Torch Courier
12 Omniscience
13 Thousand-Year Storm
14 Mystic Forge
15 Precongnition Field
16 Emergence Zone
Stage Combo:
17 The Antiquities War
18 Mox Amber
19 Manifold Key
20 Cleansing Nova
21 Cleansing Nova
22 Disdainful Stroke
23 Pattern Matcher
24 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle
25 Militia Bugler
26 Tragic Poet
27 Gaea's Blessing
28 Citywatch Sphinx
29 Repudiate // Replicate
Proliferation:
30 Evolution Sage
Recycling Lands:
31 World Shaper
32 Lotus Field
Recycling World Shaper:
33 Demanding Dragon
34 Unholy Indenture
35 Captive Audience
36 Role Reversal
37 Yarok, the Desecrated
38 Spark Double
39 Switcheroo
Drawing:
40 Honor the God-Pharaoh
41 Ionize
Life Gain:
42 Banefire
43 Doublecast
44 Imperial Ceratops
45 Angel of Vitality
46 Vicious Rumors
47 Baffling End
48 Thorn Lieutenant
49 Azor's Gateway
Returning from Exile:
50 Karn, the Great Creator
Untapping Lands:
51 Teferi, Hero of Domaninaria
Playing Emergence Zone:
52 Wayward Swordtooth
Disposable Cards:
53 Nexus of Fate
54 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
55 Repudiate // Replicate
56 Repudiate // Replicate
57 Rallying Roar
58 Rallying Roar
59 Rallying Roar
60 Rallying Roar
So we can currently exile the last 9 cards plus Gift of Growth, so we can deal a final damage of more than 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 11 -> 12) -> 12.
Unholy Indenture has the creature ETB with a +1/+1 counter. We can use that to make a blank Spark double and then a ton of Teferi and/or Karn.
If we cut spark double the only other way to make nonlegendary tokens is Helm of the Host but it seems very difficult to make proper use of that, especially without a way to make it indestructible.
Looks like my original plan with crafty cutpurse was to make red expensive and use crafty cutpurse + Grasping Thrull + Angel of Vitality to gain a bunch of life, reshuffling by giving them Nezahal, primal tide + Psychic Corrosion + refilling their deck with discard + Gaea's Blessing + Ionize. And having the whole thing be limited by raw mana as we can't make token copies of Gyre Engineer.
Unfortunately, that plan is currently infinite with Stony Strength making Gyre Engineer mana cheap. The only way to even get started turn 2 that doesn't use stony strength is 4xleyline elf land land emergency powers with 0 floating. Which is not a good position to start from, especially if red legends are off limits.
Interesting plan, although we can still cast Role Reversal by drawing it, unless we get rid of Omniscience.
Edit: Does that plan give more layers than the last deck? If so, it's worth looking for a Stony Strength-less start.
I don't think that the plan is even worth very many layers because we can't do the stage combo without toggling the crafty cutpurse back to us.