I'm not 100% on how things are optimally getting set up but i believe the plan was something like:
The way we were building the tower in the first place was cast and IonizeGaea's blessing to draw Warlord's Fury, (which also needs to be ionized?). Each WLF draws Nova (well, one draws Ionize). Cast and counter nova. let one resolve.
And in response to all the rest resolving, we pay 4 more life to Ionize our card drawers and make another nova.
Repeat until don't have more life. (we start at 18 so 4 iterations leaves us at 2)
Now at the very top we start using alternating novas + card draw to make mana.
Here yeah there is a problem with WLF. We can use the mana to redraw WLF.
So it does need to go. Gaea's blessing is safe because it needs to be Ionized every time it is cast or it is forever stuck in the graveyard.
Quote from Deedlit11 »
If we resolve (WPPW) (WPPW), we should break even on white mana (we should store up 8 white mana as we resolve, and then use the 8 white mana to cast four alternating Cleansing Novas), but then the stack will look like W...W P...P W...W P...P. So there will be more W's and P's in the top four groups, but one less W in the fifth group. So this is the normal stage process, assuming that things are working as I think they are. (I admit that I haven't taken a deep look at what happens when we resolve multiple groups down.)
The issue I'm seeing is if we can skim from the top copies of nova as we cast them to generate more mana.
Lets say a Wrath just resolved, and we have 3 white floating.
Get elephant in hand
Cast Purify. and let the top one resolve. (1 White)
Kick the Elephant cast the lockets. (3 White)
Let the next Purify resolve.
Cast Wrath (1 White)
Let one resolve.
Return the elephant
Kick it to return the lockets (3 white)
Let the next wrath resolve. We are back where we started but with more novas. (and the whole loop is very similar to the WPPW process)
This combo is gated on how we reshuffle and maybe on how we get a kickable Elephant. but it seems difficult to stop this and leave a workable way to rebuild from WPPW. We'd need to only be able to reshuffle at very specific points.
@Jkibbs,
Thats pretty similar to the starting line I have outlined but I didn't see the issue with the lockets like that.
Yeah the lockets card draw does mess our lines up. If only we had access to the signets instead...
Also note that we can't have two novas with sphynx due to not needing one of the reshuffles in #128.
Deed- yeah basically. If we can make the draw towers sufficiently tall enough via TYS we can loop what ever we want. I was trying to do it without using blessing/ionize loop but I think I might actually need to do it to make it work properly. I think we need a draw tower around 15-16 draws to loop the lockets profitably but after that it just goes infinite. Cutting WLF should fix it.
All that being said we can still make a similar tower via blessing/ionize that is limited via life and needing to have access to 1 red to start it off. This loop would allow us to loop all of our creatures and instants and scoreries for very little investment and could be expanded to loop artifacts and enchantments if we want to. As it stands this loop can loop all ins/sor and all creatures for the cost of 1 draw and 1 green mana floating when we start.
Hmm wait no, it’s way better than that actually. We loop it x times where x is our TYS count when use a draw to draw nova then cast it on wrath mode. We get x copies. We cast impulse off the top to get all of our creatures and cast them. Then we cast all ins/sor off the top off the mana we generate in the process. Then a copy of wrath resolves, triggering sphinx/blessing. We get impulse at the top again repeat our creatures and ins/sor off the top, and then a copy of wrath resolves again. Once all of our wraths have been used up we go to the next draw, we draw and cast nova(wrath) and go again with a way higher TYS count to start making wraths. We repeat until we are on our last draw, which will draw us ionize and leave blessing on the top of library. Now we pay 1g and 2 life to repopulate our draw tower. We do this by casting blessing off the top, holding priority to respond before to the TYS trigger and counter the blessing. These both go to yard. Now blessings TYS triggers resolves and we shuffle ionize and blessing back in to use at the end of our draw tower again.
Neat ...
Edit: at some point we will need to counter the original wrath to allow it to be reshuffled to be redrawn to create another wrath tower. Which we can do easily via stroke
Edit 2: we could actually use red mana creation as the limiter. We have to force ourselves to cast blessing off the top and then ionize also from the top similarly timed as I mentioned above. If we cannot keep ionize on top and can get it into our hand(pretty sure we can) I think we need to use life as our upper limit. We can’t use instants, soroceries, creatures, artifacts or enchantments to make life as we can loop all of those as described above. Maybe walkers? But we can’t have a way to kill them if we do that.
Edit 3: well we might be able to use enchantments/ artifacts. It’s super easy to use nova on wrath to loop ins/sor and creatures but to loop enchantments and artifacts I would need to use actual draws. This makes getting to the pwwp or wppw stack a bit difficult in my list. The only way I can rebuild post nova(purify) is by casting wrath nova and then using a few draws up to rebuild. It does allow me to loop, but I don’t get any compounding towers in the process(not yet anyway). Hmm I think I only need precog field to make it work, maybe something like ixalan’s binding to have field (or something else) survive the nova? No that doesn’t do it ..... would need something like adventurous impulse but for artifacts/enchantments to really make it work. Even then I’d need omniscience and TYS saved too ...
Edit 4: ok so I can kinda loop the artifacts/enchantments but it’s not nearly as often as the ins/sor/creatures. I think I can do it off of just 1 nova too. So as we get to the end of a wrath tower we will counter the original wrath and let it get shuffled in. Then we do our normal song and dance of casting all u/g ins/sor/creatures. So now we have 1 last wrath copy on the stack. Before that resolves we tap our 3 lockers to make 3 white mana. Then we cast nova on purify off the top of the deck. We wipe our art/enc into the yard and all copies of purify wrath kinda go to waste, then original resolves and goes to yard. Now our last wrath nova resolves. We get everything back into deck and we have 1 white mana floating and basically infinite UG as well. Now we start resolving some draws off our draw tower. We get omniscience first then TYS, the field, then our lockets. We play all these out now we resolve our ins/sor/creatures off the top. Now we draw our nova again and start another wrath tower. Once we reach the end of that tower we can again set up a loop of our enchantments/artifacts if we want to, though not sure what for. The purify novas copies just go to waste currently unless I am missing something? Oops I need to counter the original wrath nova with 2 copies still on the stack(after I counter the original). One to reshuffle nova and the last to reshuffle everything.
@FortyTwo: In my long analysis, I think the setup with The Mending of Dominaria (but not Homarid Explorer) was able to work for WPPW but not for the above infinite combo, because after casting a Wrath Nova, we have The Mending of Dominaria stuck on the battlefield and we can't get a reshuffle. The problem was that it did work for the WPP infinite combo, since after casting a Purity Nova, we can resolve one to get TMoD off the battlefield and into the graveyard.
I think Homarid Explorer can work for WPPW but not for WPP, because again we will have Homarid Explorer stuck on the battlefield for the latter combo. But it might still go infinite with the above combo, I'm not sure yet.
@J_kibbs: Keep brainstorming! It would be interesting to switch from life to red mana as the limiter. I'm not sure how to then transition from red mana to life though; something like Bolas's Citadel could work, but we wouldn't get a layer that way, whereas we do transitioning from life to red mana using Banefire. Maybe there is something better though.
Edit: J_kibbs, the Purify Novas are necessary to get the lockets off the battlefield so that we can refetch them with Excavation Elephant and tap them again. Otherwise, we can tap them once and they just stay on the battlefield.
Edit: Something weird with the MTS forums, I made an edit, but it didn't show the change when I refreshed. Then I try to edit it again, and the change is there in the editing window.
Hmm I understand recycling the lockets as an action but not really the gain in that action. I can loop all instants and sorceries and creatures without having to loop enchantments/artifacts at all anyway. Right now I can do it just to do it but it doesn’t really gain me anything. Yes I can use 6 draws to net enough white mana to get a “free” nova cast of the top of the deck, or I can just use 1 draw(instead of 6) and get that already. Again I might be missing something.
Also, what are we actually killing with? If it’s banefire we can’t use walkers to gain life .... an interesting option if we aren’t using banefire would be use star of extinction as a way to kill Sphinx and get our walkers back again to reuse. We would have to have a way to redraw them or replay them(prob just redraw them tbh) but it would be limited the amount of times we could use star as we need a land to target. Also we could probably get marwyn large enough to live through it and not go infinite but go very large(like huge actually). We could also limit the number of times we did too much with Sphinx as well as we will be limited in amount of times we can cast it. As of right now we can’t play more lands .... ah ***** never mind. Grow from ashes let’s us get lands back when we shuffle them back in ... nuts, thought that might have worked ... *sigh*
I don’t think I can make red mana a limiter unless we get rid of omniscience. As long as I can set up the blessing draw tower it’s too easy to put ionize into hand and cast it for free. We’d need a whole redo to make this work .... hmm we might be able to have a different start if we use finale of revelation but it would take some serious work
Yes, we can use a card draw to draw Cleansing Nova, but that is only one layer's worth of Cleansing Novas per Gaea's Blessing. In order for the stage to work, we need to process it most of the time without any card drawing at all.
It may be a bit easier to understand if we start out with a bunch of white mana, rather than a bunch of card draws. With 2X white mana, we can cast Cleansing Nova X times, each time countering it. (assuming that we can reshuffle when necessary) We alternate the modes each time we cast Cleansing Nova, so we get a stack that looks like:
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
....
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
So the idea is to resolve this stack of alternating groups, without any card drawing. Here is how we want it to work: We resolve the top group of Wrath Novas, then resolve one Purify Nova to get rid of the Orzhov lockets. Then we bring back the lockets, tap them for white mana, then cast a Wrath Nova again. We keep doing this while we have more than two Purify Novas in the first Purify Nova group. After we are down to two Purify Novas, the top of the stack looks like
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
...
So we resolve the Wrath Novas again, but this time we resolve both Purify Novas, which allows us destroy and refetch the lockets twice to gain four white mana, but only if we resolve the next Wrath Nova below the Purify Novas. (This is a tricky part that we are trying to make work right now.) Then we can cast a Purify Nova followed by a Wrath Nova. So the stack now has a large top Wrath Nova group and a large top Purify Nova group, but the second Wrath Nova group has decreased by one. If we keep going, eventually the second Wrath Nova group will decrease down to just a single Wrath Nova (or maybe we want two, it depends on the specifics of the eventual setup), and then the next time down we resolve both that Wrath Nova and the Purify Nova below it, to be able to gain six white mana in reserve, and then we will cast Wrath Nova, then Purify Nova, then Wrath Nova again from there. And so on and so forth.
So that is what a stage looks like, and we get a layer for each group in the stage stack.
As for what we are killing with, the idea was to use Banefire. I'm not sure why you say we can't use walkers to gain life?
Concerning Star of Extinction... yeah, it seems hard to make it so that we can play lands, but we can't replay lands after we destroy them. One way is to have a limited number of Wayward Swordtooths; we could have 4 Swordtooths + 4 Spark Doubles + 4 Mirror Images, so we could play 12 additional lands I suppose. So if the highest part of the deck was to use the same planeswalkers a bunch of times, that could be a way. Nice observation!
In the most recent deck, the highest thing was to use Teferi, Hero of Dominaria a bunch of times to cause many Mountain untaps during the end step. We could destroy Teferi with Banefire and redraw it, but it didn't go infinite because the benefit doesn't occur until the end step, when they trigger all at once. Currently we are looking at maybe adding Homarid Explorer and removing Quasiduplicate. In this case Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is still at the top, but we also have Grand Warlord Radha at the same level. But, maybe we could have Teferi untap Sanctum of the Sun? That would actually be better, since we can no longer Quasiduplicate Nikya of the Old Ways.
is a tower of wrath novas(wwww....w) being converted into a tower looking like wppwppwppwppw good enough for the stage? it converts as it works its way through the original tower of wrath novas. using poets and elephants i think i can make this happen. it actually looks like wpp...pwpp...pwpp...pwpp... but it does alternate and i don't think multiple purify nova's resolving in a row causes any issues. i can cast a wrath nova during it but it cuts off my ability to recur the purify nova end of it, destroying the ability to make a wppwppwppw structure for however many wrath's i have left in the tower. to "reset" from this i'd have to finish out the tower of remaining wrath's, use up a draw from my blessing tower and rebuild.
i think i need to use a slightly different configuration than you guys but i think it works. i need to separate the haste and gravedigger effect so i'll need to add samut and actual gravedigger instead of just garna. shouldn't be an issue unless we can't use walkers at some point.
I still find it a bit odd that terminology wise the 'highest' thing is at the bottom of the stack and the lowest thing is at the top.
As for just The Mending of Dominaria as a reshuffler, I'm pretty sure it goes infinite as it slots easily into both reshuffles in the #128 combo.
Now this may be a crazy idea but:
What if we cut Gaea's Blessing and used The Mending act 3 as our actual reshuffle trigger?
Sure it leaves The Mending in the yard, but tragic poet fixes that.
But we need a good way to proliferate.
I think Martyr for the Cause is the least likely to go infinite. (though this does seem similar to using citywatch sphynx).
First, with Quasiduplicate, we can get many reshuffles from each wrath. Without quasiduplicate we need two wraths to get a reshuffle,
Purify is only profitable in that it kills our artifacts.
Can WPPW work?
Well we can get the mana just fine, but because we can't reshuffle off of a purify, we can't recast both types of nova. So this looks like a dead end just like Citywatch Sphinx.
Hmm
What about Bloom Hulk as a proliferate trigger? Obviously Quaisduplicate goes infinite.
But we get one reshuffle per wrath (due to naban).
The key point is that we can hold the bloom hulk to reshuffle after a purify and then wrath it away to reshuffle for wrath.
But I think this also lets us do the 128 infinite, bleh.
I'm really struggling to make the WPPW thing work without allowing us to skim off the top of new wrath and purify batches.
I really hope we don't have to scrap this.
Edit:
1s a tower of wrath novas(wwww....w) being converted into a tower looking like wppwppwppwppw good enough for the stage?
That looks very likely to go infinite, each cast of nova makes a bunch of copies from TYS. Important rules note is that copied spells choose the same mode.
Hmm, what about using Finale of Devastation to bring back Homarid Explorer or Bloom Hulk? That way you can't hold on to the creature to use when we want to. Or does that make the WPPW combo not work?
the thing is that i can't add more w's to the tower at any point(i mean i can i guess but i lock myself out of making wppw set ups at all at that point). those w's are a fix number, and i can only make additional wrath novas by finishing the w tower in it's entirety, using a draw up and starting another tower. that w tower will also be fixed in length(tho TYS times longer than the last tower) and i still cannot add more. the structure only looks like wpp....pwpp...pwpp... when trying to explain it. on the stack it always looks like (n)w...wpp...p with the ability to recast p after we reset(close?) the white mana production by getting the elephants back by resolving a wrath nova(w). the next time we get it looking like this again it will be (n-1)w...wppp...p. as i said i can only get a wppw in any type of configuration by building it as i resolve up through the tower of w's i have currently, which the draws are limited by the blessing tower, which are limited by life. i don't understand stages quite well enough to know if this is good enough, but it's the closest thing i can come up with that, at least in spirit, looks like a wppw structure.
hmm, ive been trying to set up wppw but i think pwwp would be much stronger as i could fully use the multiple w's that happen between p's. i'll have to see if i can make the tower start with pppp..p instead of wwww....w. edit: im pretty sure the best i could do would be ppww...wppww...wppww... as i need at least pp to be able to recast a nova in any capacity(without using a draw anyway)
edit: also bear in mind i did have to change the numbers on a few of the cards so 1) i need to explain that end of it anyway and 2) even if i can i might be missing other issues all together. i'll hopefully be able to post a list of cards and explanation tonight.
Also, Spark double can copy an etb creature, giving us 2 ways to reshuffle.
Cutting spark double means we have to do something weird like add a second elephant and the last locket to be able to net 2 again...
OH!
Cut a locket!
Go back to an easy way to reshuffle. (Diligent Excavator? No, that has other problems as Quasiduplicate can kill a legend)
Lets say Citywatch Sphinx+second Nova for now for simplicity.
This means that the WPPW process nets us 2 less mana. But we can still do my #128 combo as we rebuild, but not remake enough mana to go infinite, only to refund 1 mana per nova, which exactly matches with 2 castings of Nova to rebuild from the WPPW process.
Lets see if this works.
Top of stack
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Purifies...
Each wrath kills our creatures, gives us a bunch of reshuffles to use to make more mana.
Purify kills both lockets,
Return them with elephant (+1 white mana)
Let the next purify resolve, to kill the lockets again.
Then cast wrath. (-1 white mana)
Let one wrath resolve.
Elephant back both lockets (+0 white mana)
So we can turn the top two purifies into a batch of wraths.
Now what happens when we are low on purifies?
Stack is WWPPWW
Wraths and Purify resolve as before and we make +1 white.
Next, purify kills the lockets again and we use the top wrath of the next layer to kill the elephant and reshuffle.
Get back the lockets (the last sphinx trigger can dump them in the yard instead of reshuffling) now we are at +2 white.
NEW: Let the next wrath also resolve to kill our elephant.
Cast a purify Nova (0 white)
let one resolve
return the lockets with the elephant (+1 white)
let the next purify resolve
Cast wrath (-1 white)
let it resolve to kill elephant
kick the elephant to return the lockets (+0 white)
nice, my list had 2 lockets and 2 elephants and no spark too!
a few notes: we only can net mana with 2 lockets if we have omniscience in play when casting elephant. we need adaption to get 2 triggers too. remember nova kills all art/enchantments not just the lockets, so we need to get them both back, as well as TYS and precog field ....
i think my way works but i'll need a bit of explaining to set it up, but it's got some similarities to what you posted already, which is hopefully a good sign
nice, my list had 2 lockets and 2 elephants and no spark too!
a few notes: we only can net mana with 2 lockets if we have omniscience in play when casting elephant. we need adaption to get 2 triggers too. remember nova kills all art/enchantments not just the lockets, so we need to get them both back, as well as TYS and precog field ....
i think my way works but i'll need a bit of explaining to set it up, but it's got some similarities to what you posted already, which is hopefully a good sign
Well my line works with only one elephant. (actually needs only one) so we might be a bit different still.
As for getting the enchantments back we can have a lot of hasty tragic poet tokens. (we can even make the original indestructable with gideon so we can always Quasiduplicate more.)
Obviously we need to get back omniscience asap so we can play Thousand-Year Storm without red.
Getting back precognition field and Arcane adaptation is important too.
Note: the sulfur falls can just be islands as we cant untap them.
Added the Angrath's Marauders I forgot about completely last time. Spark double currently isn't doing much?
Also I'm not sure if Sanctum of the Sun is worth 2 mountains, I suspect not.
Edit: If you can make it work with just one nova J_Kibbs I'm interested in saving a card slot if possible.
Edit2: Spark double is currently only giving us access to copies of Grand Warlord Radha, and one extra activation of Teferi. Does not seem worth the card slot.
forty two: u can pull it off with one nova if i can indeed get a stage by building it by starting a tower of wrath nova's. to do this u need to draw the nova from the deck(using up a draw) and cast it on wrath mode via omniscience. then you counter the original w/ stroke off the top of the deck for 1U. now they both go to the yard and TYS populates our wrath tower. we need to use the first wrath copy to get nova back into the deck to be able to make our alt mode copies of it. we can make some mana and up our TYS count at the cost of 1 green mana. we cast impluse of the top and pick up all of our creatures. we then cast them all. we then tap engineer for UG and cast gift of growth off the top and have all copies target engineer. we now have enough mana to cast the rest of our blue and green ins/sor. we now have nova on top of our deck. we cast it via lockets and we get a tower of purify novas. most of these will go to waste currently in my list. we use the last 2 copies(1 copy and the original) to make it possible to generate enough white mana to be able to set it off again. however, currently nova is in our yard and we need to let another wrath copy resolve to get it back to start it again. i'll explain the detail on the white mana later but this structure/procedure operates with only 1 nova.
edit: it's important to note that we need to make sure once we use up the last purify nova that we get the lockets back into our hand. if we leave them in the yard they will shuffle into the deck when the wrath nova resolves, where we can no longer interact without using up draw(very bad for us). if we wait to start our mana production until the end of the purify tower this should be possible. if we do it too early things will end up in the wrong places
if the above structure is not a stage then u might still need 2 novas. i don't need 2 to do the above, but it might not be a true stage anyway ...
Oh, you just have the top of the stack.
What we want is to make a large number of aternating nova batches. Not just that top bit.
Its not worth keeping track of U and G mana, they are not our bottleneck. (especially not green) So assume every reshuffle we cast Impulse and Gift of Growth and Quasiduplicate and whatever else we need in those colors. (such as disdainful stroke on cleansing nova, we even want to cast Grow from the ashes just to increase storm count)
Currently we do this by casting and Ionizing Gaea's Blessing to make a bunch of TYS draw triggers. We will use those to draw Nova repeatedly.
So the stack is just a bunch of instances of "Draw a card" and we can tap the lockets for WW
we draw Nova and cast it on purify mode for free, let one copy resolve, return the lockets with the elephant (WWW floating).
Let another copy resolve to kill the lockets again.
Cast wrath W floating.
Reshuffle elephant and get the lockets back. WW floating. (we need to keep some W in reserve for kicking the elephant so we cant purify here.)
Each of our wrath copies now only gives us reshuffles, which gives us storm count and more mana than we can use.
When we run low on wraths, we can use 2 purifies to recast wrath and net 0 mana.
When we run low on purifies, the next thing down is a card draw, which we use to cast Wrath for free to be the wraths below the purifies in the WPPW process.
Each card draw allows us to rebuild the Nova tower 1 level higher.
But we eventually run out of card draws. so the tower would finish. So rather than rebuild it with no draw triggers under it, we float the mana from resolving down. Then pay 2 more life to do all that over again. But with more draw triggers and more floating white mana to start.
Once we are at 2 life, We can use Teferi for one more draw trigger. But once that's used up, in response to the final Wrath, we make many Nikya of the old ways and tap a mountain for lots of R. Then let the last wrath resolve so we can cast spells again.
We use Gideon Blackblade to give a Sun-Crowned Hunters lifelink and indestructible (quasiduplicate a copy to use him more)
We cast Banefire x=1 at the dino to trigger its enrage targeting Teferi (Oracle update gave this card the ability to hit our own walkers).
We Quasiduplicate many Angrath's Marauders to turn that 3 damage into a lot more than that.
Because of lifelink, what was bad for Teferi was very good for us.
Now we have tons of life to ionize gaea's blessing with to remake the tower much much bigger.
We do this for each copy of Banefire. (this is why we made the dino indestructible, otherwise the copies would fizzle).
We can only activate Teferi with an empty stack so we only get 1 teferi activation per red mana we make.
Then in the endstep each of the teferi untap triggers gives us more red.
In the end once we have exhausted all of our red mana, the very last enrage trigger we point at our opponent. to hit them for 3*2^X
where X is our final storm count.
X is somewhere around 3 -> 3 -> ( 3-> 3 -> 26 -> 5) -> 5. Though I'd leave it to Deedlit11 for a better estimate.
Yeah I was just looking at if I could do a pp...pww....wp structure(the one u talk about above). I don’t think I can do it off of just one nova card. It’s easy enough to set up with 2. They pwwp structure is much more powerful certainly.
And yes very top of the stack is red mana bottle neck. If we can convert that into life gain(ideally in chunks of 2 at a time). Under that will be the blessing/ionize draw towers. Under that will be our nova towers(which sounds like they are stages?).
We can get a bit more value out of Rada if we include a fog. If fog is included we can add extra combat steps to really push rada’s value. The extra combats will require a draw to be used(it’s a rw card so we can’t cast it off the top with pre cog field) but it would give
large amounts of red mana(we can attack with many creatures, many times, and not kill our opp) for us to top out into. It also gives us times to reuse walkers if we can kill them off and get them back to reuse. Once we are in end step we lose this but it’s another value engine to look into
Edit: wait, isn’t netting white mana a no go? Doesn’t that let us extend our towers infinitely?
Also if we include nexus of fate we can turn all blue mana into storm count. The extra turns are very infinite but we won’t ever see them given the challenges allowances/restrictions.
@FortyTwo: It's looking very good! Spark Double is needed so that we can get of copies of Nikya of the Old Ways. And I agree that Sanctum of the Sun is not worth giving up two Mountains for. (although it would be if we ever lost our ability to have lots of Nikyas)
Is there a possibility that we can replace Excavation Elephant? Maybe with something like Golgari Findbroker? The idea is that would take us down to needing one white mana per artifact retrieval, which could be supplied by Mox Amber rather than Orzhov Locket. This would allow Warlord's Fury back in I think. It would keep us from using Nikya of the Old Ways, but we could still get that layer using Sanctum of the Sun, so I think we would wind up still better.
@J_kibbs: We don't really need a Fog, because we can just get rid of all of our attacking creatures using a Cleansing Nova. However, the only way I know of to get additional combat phases in Standard is Response // Resurgence, and that goes infinite, since we can keep casting it and attacking for more red mana. (Yes, casting Resurgence costs a red mana to cast, but we are getting lots of red mana back for it so it still goes infinite.)
As far as netting white mana goes, we have to be careful how that works. In the correct stage process, we pay white mana, and then get the white mana back, but it costs us one of the Cleansing Novas in one of the groups, so it doesn't go infinite in a very precise fashion. Also, in order for the stage to function correctly, we need to be able to accumulate white mana as we resolve more and more groups, because once we get to a stage that has more than two Novas in the group, we remove one of those Novas, and then rebuild all the stage groups above it that we just resolved. To do so we need to have excess white mana stored up that allows us to rebuild exactly the same number of groups that we resolved. So if everything works, it doesn't go infinite, but it has to work in a very precise fashion.
Nexus of Fate may add to our storm count, but that just adds a layer "below" the stage (or I guess at the top of the stage on the stack), which is insignificant; whether casting Gaea's Blessing with a storm count of X creates a stage with X or X+1 layers is inconsequential compared to the number of times we cast Gaea's Blessing, and we can greatly increase the number of times we cast Gaea's Blessing by adding another Mountain rather the adding Nexus of Fate. That's why we have so many Mountains, a card needs to be pretty good to be worth sacrificing a Mountain for in the current setup.
Hmm, I think I made a mistake. I’ve been trying to rework my single nova concept. At best it is still far worse than the 2 nova list as I can’t convert my ever growing nova towers into anything relevant(I think at best the growing towers only up my storm by 2, yeah it’s real bad lol)and at worst it makes an infinitely increasingly long wrath tower.
I think I am stuck ... *sigh*
On the plus side I think I understand stages a bit better now ..... maybe?
So if we start with a purify tower 50 novas long, we get 25 layers worth of growth(we need 2 purify’s to make a wrath layer/tower I believe)?
So the next purify tower we make should be x->25->y purify’s long ....
Am I understanding this whole thing right?
Edit: my notation might be way off lol but I hope the question/answer makes some sense. Hmm x->25->y seems low. It’s more like x->(x^^^y)^25->y ... that seems closer but might, no definitely is, the wrong notation lol
I don't think you are quite understanding it right.
Although, I'm still not quite sure what you are planning to do after you create a Purify Nova tower 50 novas high. Do you just cast a Wrath Nova after every two Purify Novas resolve, and then resolve the Wrath Nova tower?
If so, how much you get depends on whether you can do much after each Wrath. If you can't reshuffle after a Wrath, but can only reshuffle in with a Purify Nova or in combination with a Purify Nova, then each pair of Purify Novas will allow you to cast N spells, where N is the number of instants / sorceries that we can cast with our available mana. (Not counting Gaea's Blessing of course) So after 25 pairs of Purify Novas, our TYS count will have increased by 25N. Not that much.
If we can reshuffle after each Wrath, then after each Wrath we can cast N instants/sorceries and then reshuffle. So if we cast a Wrath Nova and get X copies, then after we resolve all the Wraths we will have cast another XN instants/sorceries, and our TYS count will have increased to X(N+1). So after 25 pairs of Purify Novas, our TYS count will have gone from X to X(N+1)^25. Better, but not astronomically large.
To get really big numbers, we need to cast more Purify Novas. So, let's say cast a Wrath Nova at the bottom of the stack, and get X copies of them. (or 2X copies, if we need to use them two at a time) And let's we can cast a Purify Nova on top of that, and then a Wrath Nova on top of that, and can resolve that just like above. Then say we can resolve a Wrath Nova from the bottom group and then repeat casting the Purify Nova and the Wrath Nova on top. We have already seen that if we cast a Purify Nova with X copies, then we can take a TYS count from X to X(N+1)^X after we resolve the Purify Novas. (or actually X(N+1)^(X/2), but I will just say X(N+1)^X to keep things simpler) Then we resolve a Wrath Nova from the bottom group and cast Purify Nova on top again, but this time with X(N+1)^X copies of Purify Nova. So now, when we resolve we will get [X(N+1)^X](N+1)^[X(N+1)^X] as our TYS count, or more than (N+1)^[(N+1)^X]. Then, after a second Wrath Nova from the bottom group is resolved, we can cast Purify Nova again and increase our TYS count to more than (N+1)^(N+1)^(N+1)^X. And so on for each Wrath Nova. After all X Wrath Novas are resolved, we will have increased our TYS count to more than (N+1)^(N+1)^...^(N+1)^X, or more than (N+1)^^X.
That's certainly better, but what if we could keep going? Let's say we could cast a Purify Nova with an empty stack, and then have the resources to cast Wrath Nova, then Purify Nova on top, then a Wrath Nova on top of that. And let's say after we resolve two Purify Novas from the bottom group, we could again cast Wrath/Nova/Wrath on top. Then, as seen in the last paragraph, after the first Wrath/Nova/Wrath resolves, we increase the TYS count from X to more than (N+1)^^X. Then we resolve a couple of Purify Novas, then cast Wrath/Nova/Wrath again and resolve it, taking the TYS count to more than (N+1)^^(N+1)^^X. And we do this for each pair of Purify Novas. So after X pairs we will wind up with a TYS count of more than (N+1)^^^X.
Then, if we could create a stack of 5 alternating groups of Purify Nova and Wrath Nova, we can take X to (N+1)^^^^X. In general, with X alternating groups we can take X to more than (N+1) -> X -> X-1.
So yeah, that's how we use X groups of alternating abilities to create X layers, or a stage using our terminology. A tower of a single thing isn't going to cut it. You mentioned earlier that you had some way to turn a tower of just Wrath Novas or Purify Novas into a tower of alternating Nova modes, but that raises the concern of why that doesn't go infinite. But, I would need to see how you go about doing that to say for sure.
Yeah I must still be missing something. I think we are turning each draw into a stage unto itself, but maybe I’m not looking at a big enough picture.
I’m wondering how u don’t go infinite if u can recast something to re-extend the stage length. If we can re lengthen the original resource chain, isn’t that infinite?
Example:
We take a small purify tower, say only 4 copies long. After using 2 copies we have enough white mana to start a wrath tower of say 5 wraths long and our stack should look like this after using up 2 P’s:
Last
Draw(s)
P
P
W
W
W
W
W
First
Now if we can insert more P after this while still in our wrath tower only, doesn’t that go infi?
If we rebuild looking like:
Last
Draw(s)
P
P
W
W
W
P
....
P
First
What’s to stop us from now staring another W tower inside our new P tower, and then just repeating infinitely?
I guess that’s where I get stuck. If the stack looks more like this tho(as a whole not all at once):
Last
Draw(s)
W
W
W
(Approx 200 W’s)
W
P(#s 3+4 from org P tower)
P
W
W
W
W
W
P(#s 1 and 2 from org tower)
P
First
The above makes sense to me, but it sounds like you guys are doing far more with that 1 draw.
Edit: ignore the stage unto itself line. All sorts of bad example going on there. I just can see how we turn 2 P into many W many times for a given amount of P to begin with before we must use up a draw to repopulate our P tower(with many more W towers inside that again).
Oh no, each draw doesn't turn into a stage by itself. Each time we cast Cleansing Nova we need either two white mana, or a card draw to cast it from our hand. So we cast a Gaea's Blessing, and get a bunch of copies, so the stack looks like
First
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
If say the lockets are in our hand, we can play them and tap them for white mana. So we have two white mana now. Next, we resolve a Gaea's Blessing, and draw Cleansing Nova. We cast it for free as a Purify Nova, and our stack looks like:
First
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
We play Tragic Poet.
We cast Quasiduplicate, getting many copies of Tragic Poet.
We resolve a Purify Nova, destroying our lockets.
We sacrifice some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back.
We play Naban and Excavation Elephant kicked (down to one white mana), and return the two lockets.
We tap the lockets (three white mana).
We resolve another Purify Nova, destroying our lockets again.
We resolve some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back.
We play Citywatch Sphinx
We spend two white mana to cast a Wrath Nova from the library (down to one white mana).
All the creatures get destroyed including the Sphinx, reshuffling our graveyard into our library.
Cast Adventurer's Impulse to draw our creatures.
Play Excavation Elephant kicked (down to zero white mana), returning our lockets
Tap the lockets for mana (up to two white mana)
So we are still at two white mana, and our stack looks like
First
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
We gradually resolve our Wrath Novas, then two of our Purify Novas, then recast the Wrath Nova to get an even bigger stack of Wrath Novas. Eventually we will deplete the entire Purify Nova stack, in which case we will resolve the next Gaea's Blessing to draw Cleansing Nova, and cast it as a Wrath Nova. At this point we will have enough mana to recast a Purify Nova on top, and then to cast Wrath Nova on top of that. So our stack will look like
First
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
so the second Gaea's Blessing has been replaced by a group of Wrath Novas. And we continue this process, and each time we get to the next Gaea's Blessing, we draw Cleansing Nova and cast Cleansing Nova using the appropriate mode. So the stack eventually turns into a stack of alternating groups of Wrath Novas and Purify Novas.
Deedlit11:
Unfortunately we can get Golgari Findbroker triggers from Quasiduplicate and Spark Double. That lets us net mana by resolving as many as 4 purifies before a wrath. It has to be a cast trigger.
If we cut Quasiduplicate and spark double its a lot harder to make red mana.
As for Sanctum of the Sun it requires Voltaic Servant and to exile 5 cards of different cmc, Fortunately we can exile Emergence ZoneLlanowar elves Voltaic Servant, Gideon, and the original Sun-Crowned hunters for 0,1,2,3,6 (we can't exile Teferi because we need to punch it and it is also our white legend for mox amber.)
I'm not sure if sanctum + servant is even better than the two mountains. Sure it taps for ~2^x instead of ~x but the second mountain taps for way more than that, I'm not sure if the advantage from Teferi triggers will catch up but I don't think so.
Maybe the version without Quasiduplicate/spark double wants it? But then we need to use card slots on more poets and servants.
J_kibbs:
I think you are confusing some terms.
Lets break the stack up in the middle of the combo from #166 in the end step:
Top of stack:
Quasiduplicates
Citywatch Sphynx death triggers
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Purifies
...
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Gaea's Blessing draw triggers
Banefires targeting our Dino
Teferi untap triggers
Bottom of Stack.
Our life:2 Floating White: 2
99% of the time our stack will look like that, at least with my combo.
Each entry above is a solid block or batch of the same type of spell/trigger.
The Stage combo or Tower is the '...' which represents as many alternating Nova types as we can get. This will be very high,
Everything above the tower on the stack, doesn't really impact the final number, as it is much less powerful than the Nova tower. (we can cast more pump spells here but those aren't even better than casting Grow from the ashes with no targets.)
What's really powerful are all the things on the bottom of the stack which let us rebuild everything above it even bigger.
I think maybe we will be okay using Golgari Findbroker, without Spark Double, but still keeping Quasiduplicate. Let's say we have Tragic Poet on the battlefield, and we resolve a Purify Nova. Optimally I think we still want Quasiduplicate on top of the library and Golgari Findbroker still in our hand. We need to use the Tragic Poet to return the Precognition Field, so that we can cast Quasiduplicate for more Tragic Poets. Note that now we still can't cast Golgari Findbroker, since it requires black mana that we don't have. So, we have to cast Quasiduplicate first, and we create more Tragic Poets and other creatures that we would like more copies of. We can then tap some copies of Tragic Poet to get Omniscience and Thousand-Year Storm back, and now we can cast Golgari Findbroker, and return the Mox Amber to our hand. We can the resolve another Purify Nova, but now Golgari Findbroker is on the battlefield, and Quasiduplicate is in our graveyard. So I think we can only take advantage of two Purify Novas at a time, just like we want.
Edit: Whoops, if we sacrifice the first Tragic Poet, we can't Quasiduplicate it. So we actually have to cast Quasiduplicate before we resolve the Purify Nova. In any case, the situation is the same; Quasiduplicate is not around to be able to copy Golgari Findbroker.
“We gradually resolve our Wrath Novas, then two of our Purify Novas, then recast the Wrath Nova to get an even bigger stack of Wrath Novas. Eventually we will deplete the entire Purify Nova stack, in which case we will resolve the next Gaea's Blessing to draw Cleansing Nova, and cast it as a Wrath Nova. At this point we will have enough mana to recast a Purify Nova on top, and then to cast Wrath Nova on top of that.”
So this didn’t make sense. U cast 3 novas in a row without using any resources to get them back to a castable zone(2 is fine, 3 is not). U can have a million white mana at this point, u will still only be able to cast 2 in a row without at least using up a wrath nova to shuffle stuff back into the deck, which can then cast 2 times again, if u have the mana. If u don’t have the mana u will need to resolve the whole stack down to the draws, use a draw up to draw a nova and cast purify mode to start restocking white mana.
I don’t think u can go past 4 white mana anyway(not without wasting a lot of your towers anyway). Resolving more than 2 purify in a row doesn’t make more mana. We need the elephants back to get the lockets back which require using up wraths to facilitate. If u can go from 4->5(or more) white mana u should go infinite. We stay between 1-4 with the current towers inside towers structure. Going beyond that amount should be problematic.
So another issue to watch out for is this. Quasiduplicate can make another copy of Sphinx. This means we can have 2 Sphinx dies trigger for any given wrath. This is concerning because it allows us to get lockets back from the deck without having to use draws. It’s not efficient but we can mill 2 lockets out of the deck back into graveyard and then with blessing reshuffle on the stack use 1 elephant to get them back. Not sure it’s an issue but it might be. We then resolve a wrath and we have effectively reset our misplaced lockets without using draws. Just a thought ....
Deed: u need to quasi before purify anyway. If u don’t u can’t even cast quasi as it’s on top of the deck and u will have no precognition field to allow u to cast it in any capacity.
I'm not 100% on how things are optimally getting set up but i believe the plan was something like:
The way we were building the tower in the first place was cast and Ionize Gaea's blessing to draw Warlord's Fury, (which also needs to be ionized?). Each WLF draws Nova (well, one draws Ionize). Cast and counter nova. let one resolve.
And in response to all the rest resolving, we pay 4 more life to Ionize our card drawers and make another nova.
Repeat until don't have more life. (we start at 18 so 4 iterations leaves us at 2)
Now at the very top we start using alternating novas + card draw to make mana.
Here yeah there is a problem with WLF. We can use the mana to redraw WLF.
So it does need to go. Gaea's blessing is safe because it needs to be Ionized every time it is cast or it is forever stuck in the graveyard.
The issue I'm seeing is if we can skim from the top copies of nova as we cast them to generate more mana.
Lets say a Wrath just resolved, and we have 3 white floating.
Get elephant in hand
Cast Purify. and let the top one resolve. (1 White)
Kick the Elephant cast the lockets. (3 White)
Let the next Purify resolve.
Cast Wrath (1 White)
Let one resolve.
Return the elephant
Kick it to return the lockets (3 white)
Let the next wrath resolve. We are back where we started but with more novas. (and the whole loop is very similar to the WPPW process)
This combo is gated on how we reshuffle and maybe on how we get a kickable Elephant. but it seems difficult to stop this and leave a workable way to rebuild from WPPW. We'd need to only be able to reshuffle at very specific points.
@Jkibbs,
Thats pretty similar to the starting line I have outlined but I didn't see the issue with the lockets like that.
Yeah the lockets card draw does mess our lines up. If only we had access to the signets instead...
Also note that we can't have two novas with sphynx due to not needing one of the reshuffles in #128.
- Warlord's Fury
+ Mountain ?
All that being said we can still make a similar tower via blessing/ionize that is limited via life and needing to have access to 1 red to start it off. This loop would allow us to loop all of our creatures and instants and scoreries for very little investment and could be expanded to loop artifacts and enchantments if we want to. As it stands this loop can loop all ins/sor and all creatures for the cost of 1 draw and 1 green mana floating when we start.
Hmm wait no, it’s way better than that actually. We loop it x times where x is our TYS count when use a draw to draw nova then cast it on wrath mode. We get x copies. We cast impulse off the top to get all of our creatures and cast them. Then we cast all ins/sor off the top off the mana we generate in the process. Then a copy of wrath resolves, triggering sphinx/blessing. We get impulse at the top again repeat our creatures and ins/sor off the top, and then a copy of wrath resolves again. Once all of our wraths have been used up we go to the next draw, we draw and cast nova(wrath) and go again with a way higher TYS count to start making wraths. We repeat until we are on our last draw, which will draw us ionize and leave blessing on the top of library. Now we pay 1g and 2 life to repopulate our draw tower. We do this by casting blessing off the top, holding priority to respond before to the TYS trigger and counter the blessing. These both go to yard. Now blessings TYS triggers resolves and we shuffle ionize and blessing back in to use at the end of our draw tower again.
Neat ...
Edit: at some point we will need to counter the original wrath to allow it to be reshuffled to be redrawn to create another wrath tower. Which we can do easily via stroke
Edit 2: we could actually use red mana creation as the limiter. We have to force ourselves to cast blessing off the top and then ionize also from the top similarly timed as I mentioned above. If we cannot keep ionize on top and can get it into our hand(pretty sure we can) I think we need to use life as our upper limit. We can’t use instants, soroceries, creatures, artifacts or enchantments to make life as we can loop all of those as described above. Maybe walkers? But we can’t have a way to kill them if we do that.
Edit 3: well we might be able to use enchantments/ artifacts. It’s super easy to use nova on wrath to loop ins/sor and creatures but to loop enchantments and artifacts I would need to use actual draws. This makes getting to the pwwp or wppw stack a bit difficult in my list. The only way I can rebuild post nova(purify) is by casting wrath nova and then using a few draws up to rebuild. It does allow me to loop, but I don’t get any compounding towers in the process(not yet anyway). Hmm I think I only need precog field to make it work, maybe something like ixalan’s binding to have field (or something else) survive the nova? No that doesn’t do it ..... would need something like adventurous impulse but for artifacts/enchantments to really make it work. Even then I’d need omniscience and TYS saved too ...
Edit 4: ok so I can kinda loop the artifacts/enchantments but it’s not nearly as often as the ins/sor/creatures. I think I can do it off of just 1 nova too. So as we get to the end of a wrath tower we will counter the original wrath and let it get shuffled in. Then we do our normal song and dance of casting all u/g ins/sor/creatures. So now we have 1 last wrath copy on the stack. Before that resolves we tap our 3 lockers to make 3 white mana. Then we cast nova on purify off the top of the deck. We wipe our art/enc into the yard and all copies of purify wrath kinda go to waste, then original resolves and goes to yard. Now our last wrath nova resolves. We get everything back into deck and we have 1 white mana floating and basically infinite UG as well. Now we start resolving some draws off our draw tower. We get omniscience first then TYS, the field, then our lockets. We play all these out now we resolve our ins/sor/creatures off the top. Now we draw our nova again and start another wrath tower. Once we reach the end of that tower we can again set up a loop of our enchantments/artifacts if we want to, though not sure what for. The purify novas copies just go to waste currently unless I am missing something? Oops I need to counter the original wrath nova with 2 copies still on the stack(after I counter the original). One to reshuffle nova and the last to reshuffle everything.
I think Homarid Explorer can work for WPPW but not for WPP, because again we will have Homarid Explorer stuck on the battlefield for the latter combo. But it might still go infinite with the above combo, I'm not sure yet.
@J_kibbs: Keep brainstorming! It would be interesting to switch from life to red mana as the limiter. I'm not sure how to then transition from red mana to life though; something like Bolas's Citadel could work, but we wouldn't get a layer that way, whereas we do transitioning from life to red mana using Banefire. Maybe there is something better though.
Edit: J_kibbs, the Purify Novas are necessary to get the lockets off the battlefield so that we can refetch them with Excavation Elephant and tap them again. Otherwise, we can tap them once and they just stay on the battlefield.
Edit: Something weird with the MTS forums, I made an edit, but it didn't show the change when I refreshed. Then I try to edit it again, and the change is there in the editing window.
Also, what are we actually killing with? If it’s banefire we can’t use walkers to gain life .... an interesting option if we aren’t using banefire would be use star of extinction as a way to kill Sphinx and get our walkers back again to reuse. We would have to have a way to redraw them or replay them(prob just redraw them tbh) but it would be limited the amount of times we could use star as we need a land to target. Also we could probably get marwyn large enough to live through it and not go infinite but go very large(like huge actually). We could also limit the number of times we did too much with Sphinx as well as we will be limited in amount of times we can cast it. As of right now we can’t play more lands .... ah ***** never mind. Grow from ashes let’s us get lands back when we shuffle them back in ... nuts, thought that might have worked ... *sigh*
I don’t think I can make red mana a limiter unless we get rid of omniscience. As long as I can set up the blessing draw tower it’s too easy to put ionize into hand and cast it for free. We’d need a whole redo to make this work .... hmm we might be able to have a different start if we use finale of revelation but it would take some serious work
It may be a bit easier to understand if we start out with a bunch of white mana, rather than a bunch of card draws. With 2X white mana, we can cast Cleansing Nova X times, each time countering it. (assuming that we can reshuffle when necessary) We alternate the modes each time we cast Cleansing Nova, so we get a stack that looks like:
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
....
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
So the idea is to resolve this stack of alternating groups, without any card drawing. Here is how we want it to work: We resolve the top group of Wrath Novas, then resolve one Purify Nova to get rid of the Orzhov lockets. Then we bring back the lockets, tap them for white mana, then cast a Wrath Nova again. We keep doing this while we have more than two Purify Novas in the first Purify Nova group. After we are down to two Purify Novas, the top of the stack looks like
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
...
So we resolve the Wrath Novas again, but this time we resolve both Purify Novas, which allows us destroy and refetch the lockets twice to gain four white mana, but only if we resolve the next Wrath Nova below the Purify Novas. (This is a tricky part that we are trying to make work right now.) Then we can cast a Purify Nova followed by a Wrath Nova. So the stack now has a large top Wrath Nova group and a large top Purify Nova group, but the second Wrath Nova group has decreased by one. If we keep going, eventually the second Wrath Nova group will decrease down to just a single Wrath Nova (or maybe we want two, it depends on the specifics of the eventual setup), and then the next time down we resolve both that Wrath Nova and the Purify Nova below it, to be able to gain six white mana in reserve, and then we will cast Wrath Nova, then Purify Nova, then Wrath Nova again from there. And so on and so forth.
So that is what a stage looks like, and we get a layer for each group in the stage stack.
As for what we are killing with, the idea was to use Banefire. I'm not sure why you say we can't use walkers to gain life?
Concerning Star of Extinction... yeah, it seems hard to make it so that we can play lands, but we can't replay lands after we destroy them. One way is to have a limited number of Wayward Swordtooths; we could have 4 Swordtooths + 4 Spark Doubles + 4 Mirror Images, so we could play 12 additional lands I suppose. So if the highest part of the deck was to use the same planeswalkers a bunch of times, that could be a way. Nice observation!
In the most recent deck, the highest thing was to use Teferi, Hero of Dominaria a bunch of times to cause many Mountain untaps during the end step. We could destroy Teferi with Banefire and redraw it, but it didn't go infinite because the benefit doesn't occur until the end step, when they trigger all at once. Currently we are looking at maybe adding Homarid Explorer and removing Quasiduplicate. In this case Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is still at the top, but we also have Grand Warlord Radha at the same level. But, maybe we could have Teferi untap Sanctum of the Sun? That would actually be better, since we can no longer Quasiduplicate Nikya of the Old Ways.
i think i need to use a slightly different configuration than you guys but i think it works. i need to separate the haste and gravedigger effect so i'll need to add samut and actual gravedigger instead of just garna. shouldn't be an issue unless we can't use walkers at some point.
As for just The Mending of Dominaria as a reshuffler, I'm pretty sure it goes infinite as it slots easily into both reshuffles in the #128 combo.
Now this may be a crazy idea but:
What if we cut Gaea's Blessing and used The Mending act 3 as our actual reshuffle trigger?
Sure it leaves The Mending in the yard, but tragic poet fixes that.
But we need a good way to proliferate.
I think Martyr for the Cause is the least likely to go infinite. (though this does seem similar to using citywatch sphynx).
First, with Quasiduplicate, we can get many reshuffles from each wrath. Without quasiduplicate we need two wraths to get a reshuffle,
Purify is only profitable in that it kills our artifacts.
Can WPPW work?
Well we can get the mana just fine, but because we can't reshuffle off of a purify, we can't recast both types of nova. So this looks like a dead end just like Citywatch Sphinx.
Hmm
What about Bloom Hulk as a proliferate trigger? Obviously Quaisduplicate goes infinite.
But we get one reshuffle per wrath (due to naban).
The key point is that we can hold the bloom hulk to reshuffle after a purify and then wrath it away to reshuffle for wrath.
But I think this also lets us do the 128 infinite, bleh.
I'm really struggling to make the WPPW thing work without allowing us to skim off the top of new wrath and purify batches.
I really hope we don't have to scrap this.
Edit:
That looks very likely to go infinite, each cast of nova makes a bunch of copies from TYS. Important rules note is that copied spells choose the same mode.
Another thing we can explore is using Angrath's Rampage instead of Cleansing Nova, maybe that changes something.
hmm, ive been trying to set up wppw but i think pwwp would be much stronger as i could fully use the multiple w's that happen between p's. i'll have to see if i can make the tower start with pppp..p instead of wwww....w. edit: im pretty sure the best i could do would be ppww...wppww...wppww... as i need at least pp to be able to recast a nova in any capacity(without using a draw anyway)
edit: also bear in mind i did have to change the numbers on a few of the cards so 1) i need to explain that end of it anyway and 2) even if i can i might be missing other issues all together. i'll hopefully be able to post a list of cards and explanation tonight.
Also, Spark double can copy an etb creature, giving us 2 ways to reshuffle.
Cutting spark double means we have to do something weird like add a second elephant and the last locket to be able to net 2 again...
OH!
Cut a locket!
Go back to an easy way to reshuffle. (Diligent Excavator? No, that has other problems as Quasiduplicate can kill a legend)
Lets say Citywatch Sphinx+second Nova for now for simplicity.
This means that the WPPW process nets us 2 less mana. But we can still do my #128 combo as we rebuild, but not remake enough mana to go infinite, only to refund 1 mana per nova, which exactly matches with 2 castings of Nova to rebuild from the WPPW process.
Lets see if this works.
Top of stack
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Purifies...
Each wrath kills our creatures, gives us a bunch of reshuffles to use to make more mana.
Purify kills both lockets,
Return them with elephant (+1 white mana)
Let the next purify resolve, to kill the lockets again.
Then cast wrath. (-1 white mana)
Let one wrath resolve.
Elephant back both lockets (+0 white mana)
So we can turn the top two purifies into a batch of wraths.
Now what happens when we are low on purifies?
Stack is WWPPWW
Wraths and Purify resolve as before and we make +1 white.
Next, purify kills the lockets again and we use the top wrath of the next layer to kill the elephant and reshuffle.
Get back the lockets (the last sphinx trigger can dump them in the yard instead of reshuffling) now we are at +2 white.
NEW: Let the next wrath also resolve to kill our elephant.
Cast a purify Nova (0 white)
let one resolve
return the lockets with the elephant (+1 white)
let the next purify resolve
Cast wrath (-1 white)
let it resolve to kill elephant
kick the elephant to return the lockets (+0 white)
I think this works now!
Really glad we wont have to scrap this engine.
a few notes: we only can net mana with 2 lockets if we have omniscience in play when casting elephant. we need adaption to get 2 triggers too. remember nova kills all art/enchantments not just the lockets, so we need to get them both back, as well as TYS and precog field ....
i think my way works but i'll need a bit of explaining to set it up, but it's got some similarities to what you posted already, which is hopefully a good sign
I'll have to give it a good look later.
And yeah in my list quasi is really just a mana maker. I don’t really even need it but I think it’s safe.
Oh, also I can do all this with just 1 actual nova card, so I still use Sphinx/blessing which sounds like it should be fine(?).
Well my line works with only one elephant. (actually needs only one) so we might be a bit different still.
As for getting the enchantments back we can have a lot of hasty tragic poet tokens. (we can even make the original indestructable with gideon so we can always Quasiduplicate more.)
Obviously we need to get back omniscience asap so we can play Thousand-Year Storm without red.
Getting back precognition field and Arcane adaptation is important too.
Current actually working deck:
2 Llanowar Elves
3 Sulfur Falls
4 Marwyn, the Nurturer
5 Sulfur Falls
6 Giant Growth
7 Gift of Growth
8 Omniscience
9 Emergency Powers
10 Thousand-Year Storm
11 Precognition Field
12 Gaea's Blessing
13 Gyre Engineer
14 Emergence Zone
16 Orzhov Locket
17 Cleansing Nova
18 Cleansing Nova
19 Disdainful Stroke
20 Excavation Elephant
21 Citywatch Sphinx
22 Naban, Dean of Iteration
23 Arcane Adaptation
24 Spark Double
25 Adventurous Impulse
26 Tragic Poet
27 Garna, the Bloodflame
29 Grow from the Ashes
30 Banefire
31 Sun-Crowned Hunters
32 Gideon Blackblade
33 Angrath's Marauders
34 Quasiduplicate
35 Nikya of the Old Ways
36 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
24 Mountain
Note: the sulfur falls can just be islands as we cant untap them.
Added the Angrath's Marauders I forgot about completely last time.
Spark double currently isn't doing much?
Also I'm not sure if Sanctum of the Sun is worth 2 mountains, I suspect not.
Edit: If you can make it work with just one nova J_Kibbs I'm interested in saving a card slot if possible.
Edit2: Spark double is currently only giving us access to copies of Grand Warlord Radha, and one extra activation of Teferi. Does not seem worth the card slot.
edit: it's important to note that we need to make sure once we use up the last purify nova that we get the lockets back into our hand. if we leave them in the yard they will shuffle into the deck when the wrath nova resolves, where we can no longer interact without using up draw(very bad for us). if we wait to start our mana production until the end of the purify tower this should be possible. if we do it too early things will end up in the wrong places
if the above structure is not a stage then u might still need 2 novas. i don't need 2 to do the above, but it might not be a true stage anyway ...
What we want is to make a large number of aternating nova batches. Not just that top bit.
Its not worth keeping track of U and G mana, they are not our bottleneck. (especially not green) So assume every reshuffle we cast Impulse and Gift of Growth and Quasiduplicate and whatever else we need in those colors. (such as disdainful stroke on cleansing nova, we even want to cast Grow from the ashes just to increase storm count)
Currently we do this by casting and Ionizing Gaea's Blessing to make a bunch of TYS draw triggers. We will use those to draw Nova repeatedly.
So the stack is just a bunch of instances of "Draw a card" and we can tap the lockets for WW
we draw Nova and cast it on purify mode for free, let one copy resolve, return the lockets with the elephant (WWW floating).
Let another copy resolve to kill the lockets again.
Cast wrath W floating.
Reshuffle elephant and get the lockets back. WW floating. (we need to keep some W in reserve for kicking the elephant so we cant purify here.)
Each of our wrath copies now only gives us reshuffles, which gives us storm count and more mana than we can use.
When we run low on wraths, we can use 2 purifies to recast wrath and net 0 mana.
When we run low on purifies, the next thing down is a card draw, which we use to cast Wrath for free to be the wraths below the purifies in the WPPW process.
Each card draw allows us to rebuild the Nova tower 1 level higher.
But we eventually run out of card draws. so the tower would finish. So rather than rebuild it with no draw triggers under it, we float the mana from resolving down. Then pay 2 more life to do all that over again. But with more draw triggers and more floating white mana to start.
Once we are at 2 life, We can use Teferi for one more draw trigger. But once that's used up, in response to the final Wrath, we make many Nikya of the old ways and tap a mountain for lots of R. Then let the last wrath resolve so we can cast spells again.
We use Gideon Blackblade to give a Sun-Crowned Hunters lifelink and indestructible (quasiduplicate a copy to use him more)
We cast Banefire x=1 at the dino to trigger its enrage targeting Teferi (Oracle update gave this card the ability to hit our own walkers).
We Quasiduplicate many Angrath's Marauders to turn that 3 damage into a lot more than that.
Because of lifelink, what was bad for Teferi was very good for us.
Now we have tons of life to ionize gaea's blessing with to remake the tower much much bigger.
We do this for each copy of Banefire. (this is why we made the dino indestructible, otherwise the copies would fizzle).
We can only activate Teferi with an empty stack so we only get 1 teferi activation per red mana we make.
Then in the endstep each of the teferi untap triggers gives us more red.
In the end once we have exhausted all of our red mana, the very last enrage trigger we point at our opponent. to hit them for 3*2^X
where X is our final storm count.
X is somewhere around 3 -> 3 -> ( 3-> 3 -> 26 -> 5) -> 5. Though I'd leave it to Deedlit11 for a better estimate.
And yes very top of the stack is red mana bottle neck. If we can convert that into life gain(ideally in chunks of 2 at a time). Under that will be the blessing/ionize draw towers. Under that will be our nova towers(which sounds like they are stages?).
We can get a bit more value out of Rada if we include a fog. If fog is included we can add extra combat steps to really push rada’s value. The extra combats will require a draw to be used(it’s a rw card so we can’t cast it off the top with pre cog field) but it would give
large amounts of red mana(we can attack with many creatures, many times, and not kill our opp) for us to top out into. It also gives us times to reuse walkers if we can kill them off and get them back to reuse. Once we are in end step we lose this but it’s another value engine to look into
Edit: wait, isn’t netting white mana a no go? Doesn’t that let us extend our towers infinitely?
Also if we include nexus of fate we can turn all blue mana into storm count. The extra turns are very infinite but we won’t ever see them given the challenges allowances/restrictions.
Is there a possibility that we can replace Excavation Elephant? Maybe with something like Golgari Findbroker? The idea is that would take us down to needing one white mana per artifact retrieval, which could be supplied by Mox Amber rather than Orzhov Locket. This would allow Warlord's Fury back in I think. It would keep us from using Nikya of the Old Ways, but we could still get that layer using Sanctum of the Sun, so I think we would wind up still better.
@J_kibbs: We don't really need a Fog, because we can just get rid of all of our attacking creatures using a Cleansing Nova. However, the only way I know of to get additional combat phases in Standard is Response // Resurgence, and that goes infinite, since we can keep casting it and attacking for more red mana. (Yes, casting Resurgence costs a red mana to cast, but we are getting lots of red mana back for it so it still goes infinite.)
As far as netting white mana goes, we have to be careful how that works. In the correct stage process, we pay white mana, and then get the white mana back, but it costs us one of the Cleansing Novas in one of the groups, so it doesn't go infinite in a very precise fashion. Also, in order for the stage to function correctly, we need to be able to accumulate white mana as we resolve more and more groups, because once we get to a stage that has more than two Novas in the group, we remove one of those Novas, and then rebuild all the stage groups above it that we just resolved. To do so we need to have excess white mana stored up that allows us to rebuild exactly the same number of groups that we resolved. So if everything works, it doesn't go infinite, but it has to work in a very precise fashion.
Nexus of Fate may add to our storm count, but that just adds a layer "below" the stage (or I guess at the top of the stage on the stack), which is insignificant; whether casting Gaea's Blessing with a storm count of X creates a stage with X or X+1 layers is inconsequential compared to the number of times we cast Gaea's Blessing, and we can greatly increase the number of times we cast Gaea's Blessing by adding another Mountain rather the adding Nexus of Fate. That's why we have so many Mountains, a card needs to be pretty good to be worth sacrificing a Mountain for in the current setup.
I think I am stuck ... *sigh*
On the plus side I think I understand stages a bit better now ..... maybe?
So if we start with a purify tower 50 novas long, we get 25 layers worth of growth(we need 2 purify’s to make a wrath layer/tower I believe)?
So the next purify tower we make should be x->25->y purify’s long ....
Am I understanding this whole thing right?
Edit: my notation might be way off lol but I hope the question/answer makes some sense. Hmm x->25->y seems low. It’s more like x->(x^^^y)^25->y ... that seems closer but might, no definitely is, the wrong notation lol
Although, I'm still not quite sure what you are planning to do after you create a Purify Nova tower 50 novas high. Do you just cast a Wrath Nova after every two Purify Novas resolve, and then resolve the Wrath Nova tower?
If so, how much you get depends on whether you can do much after each Wrath. If you can't reshuffle after a Wrath, but can only reshuffle in with a Purify Nova or in combination with a Purify Nova, then each pair of Purify Novas will allow you to cast N spells, where N is the number of instants / sorceries that we can cast with our available mana. (Not counting Gaea's Blessing of course) So after 25 pairs of Purify Novas, our TYS count will have increased by 25N. Not that much.
If we can reshuffle after each Wrath, then after each Wrath we can cast N instants/sorceries and then reshuffle. So if we cast a Wrath Nova and get X copies, then after we resolve all the Wraths we will have cast another XN instants/sorceries, and our TYS count will have increased to X(N+1). So after 25 pairs of Purify Novas, our TYS count will have gone from X to X(N+1)^25. Better, but not astronomically large.
To get really big numbers, we need to cast more Purify Novas. So, let's say cast a Wrath Nova at the bottom of the stack, and get X copies of them. (or 2X copies, if we need to use them two at a time) And let's we can cast a Purify Nova on top of that, and then a Wrath Nova on top of that, and can resolve that just like above. Then say we can resolve a Wrath Nova from the bottom group and then repeat casting the Purify Nova and the Wrath Nova on top. We have already seen that if we cast a Purify Nova with X copies, then we can take a TYS count from X to X(N+1)^X after we resolve the Purify Novas. (or actually X(N+1)^(X/2), but I will just say X(N+1)^X to keep things simpler) Then we resolve a Wrath Nova from the bottom group and cast Purify Nova on top again, but this time with X(N+1)^X copies of Purify Nova. So now, when we resolve we will get [X(N+1)^X](N+1)^[X(N+1)^X] as our TYS count, or more than (N+1)^[(N+1)^X]. Then, after a second Wrath Nova from the bottom group is resolved, we can cast Purify Nova again and increase our TYS count to more than (N+1)^(N+1)^(N+1)^X. And so on for each Wrath Nova. After all X Wrath Novas are resolved, we will have increased our TYS count to more than (N+1)^(N+1)^...^(N+1)^X, or more than (N+1)^^X.
That's certainly better, but what if we could keep going? Let's say we could cast a Purify Nova with an empty stack, and then have the resources to cast Wrath Nova, then Purify Nova on top, then a Wrath Nova on top of that. And let's say after we resolve two Purify Novas from the bottom group, we could again cast Wrath/Nova/Wrath on top. Then, as seen in the last paragraph, after the first Wrath/Nova/Wrath resolves, we increase the TYS count from X to more than (N+1)^^X. Then we resolve a couple of Purify Novas, then cast Wrath/Nova/Wrath again and resolve it, taking the TYS count to more than (N+1)^^(N+1)^^X. And we do this for each pair of Purify Novas. So after X pairs we will wind up with a TYS count of more than (N+1)^^^X.
Then, if we could create a stack of 5 alternating groups of Purify Nova and Wrath Nova, we can take X to (N+1)^^^^X. In general, with X alternating groups we can take X to more than (N+1) -> X -> X-1.
So yeah, that's how we use X groups of alternating abilities to create X layers, or a stage using our terminology. A tower of a single thing isn't going to cut it. You mentioned earlier that you had some way to turn a tower of just Wrath Novas or Purify Novas into a tower of alternating Nova modes, but that raises the concern of why that doesn't go infinite. But, I would need to see how you go about doing that to say for sure.
I’m wondering how u don’t go infinite if u can recast something to re-extend the stage length. If we can re lengthen the original resource chain, isn’t that infinite?
Example:
We take a small purify tower, say only 4 copies long. After using 2 copies we have enough white mana to start a wrath tower of say 5 wraths long and our stack should look like this after using up 2 P’s:
Last
Draw(s)
P
P
W
W
W
W
W
First
Now if we can insert more P after this while still in our wrath tower only, doesn’t that go infi?
If we rebuild looking like:
Last
Draw(s)
P
P
W
W
W
P
....
P
First
What’s to stop us from now staring another W tower inside our new P tower, and then just repeating infinitely?
I guess that’s where I get stuck. If the stack looks more like this tho(as a whole not all at once):
Last
Draw(s)
W
W
W
(Approx 200 W’s)
W
P(#s 3+4 from org P tower)
P
W
W
W
W
W
P(#s 1 and 2 from org tower)
P
First
The above makes sense to me, but it sounds like you guys are doing far more with that 1 draw.
Edit: ignore the stage unto itself line. All sorts of bad example going on there. I just can see how we turn 2 P into many W many times for a given amount of P to begin with before we must use up a draw to repopulate our P tower(with many more W towers inside that again).
Edit: added draw reference points in the stacks.
First
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
If say the lockets are in our hand, we can play them and tap them for white mana. So we have two white mana now. Next, we resolve a Gaea's Blessing, and draw Cleansing Nova. We cast it for free as a Purify Nova, and our stack looks like:
First
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
We play Tragic Poet.
We cast Quasiduplicate, getting many copies of Tragic Poet.
We resolve a Purify Nova, destroying our lockets.
We sacrifice some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back.
We play Naban and Excavation Elephant kicked (down to one white mana), and return the two lockets.
We tap the lockets (three white mana).
We resolve another Purify Nova, destroying our lockets again.
We resolve some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back.
We play Citywatch Sphinx
We spend two white mana to cast a Wrath Nova from the library (down to one white mana).
All the creatures get destroyed including the Sphinx, reshuffling our graveyard into our library.
Cast Adventurer's Impulse to draw our creatures.
Play Excavation Elephant kicked (down to zero white mana), returning our lockets
Tap the lockets for mana (up to two white mana)
So we are still at two white mana, and our stack looks like
First
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
We gradually resolve our Wrath Novas, then two of our Purify Novas, then recast the Wrath Nova to get an even bigger stack of Wrath Novas. Eventually we will deplete the entire Purify Nova stack, in which case we will resolve the next Gaea's Blessing to draw Cleansing Nova, and cast it as a Wrath Nova. At this point we will have enough mana to recast a Purify Nova on top, and then to cast Wrath Nova on top of that. So our stack will look like
First
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Purify Nova
Purify Nova
...
Purify Nova
Wrath Nova
Wrath Nova
...
Wrath Nova
Gaea's Blessing
Gaea's Blessing
...
Gaea's Blessing
Last
so the second Gaea's Blessing has been replaced by a group of Wrath Novas. And we continue this process, and each time we get to the next Gaea's Blessing, we draw Cleansing Nova and cast Cleansing Nova using the appropriate mode. So the stack eventually turns into a stack of alternating groups of Wrath Novas and Purify Novas.
Does this make sense?
Unfortunately we can get Golgari Findbroker triggers from Quasiduplicate and Spark Double. That lets us net mana by resolving as many as 4 purifies before a wrath. It has to be a cast trigger.
If we cut Quasiduplicate and spark double its a lot harder to make red mana.
As for Sanctum of the Sun it requires Voltaic Servant and to exile 5 cards of different cmc, Fortunately we can exile Emergence Zone Llanowar elves Voltaic Servant, Gideon, and the original Sun-Crowned hunters for 0,1,2,3,6 (we can't exile Teferi because we need to punch it and it is also our white legend for mox amber.)
I'm not sure if sanctum + servant is even better than the two mountains. Sure it taps for ~2^x instead of ~x but the second mountain taps for way more than that, I'm not sure if the advantage from Teferi triggers will catch up but I don't think so.
Maybe the version without Quasiduplicate/spark double wants it? But then we need to use card slots on more poets and servants.
J_kibbs:
I think you are confusing some terms.
Lets break the stack up in the middle of the combo from #166 in the end step:
Top of stack:
Quasiduplicates
Citywatch Sphynx death triggers
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Purifies
...
Wraths
Purifies
Wraths
Gaea's Blessing draw triggers
Banefires targeting our Dino
Teferi untap triggers
Bottom of Stack.
Our life:2 Floating White: 2
99% of the time our stack will look like that, at least with my combo.
Each entry above is a solid block or batch of the same type of spell/trigger.
The Stage combo or Tower is the '...' which represents as many alternating Nova types as we can get. This will be very high,
Everything above the tower on the stack, doesn't really impact the final number, as it is much less powerful than the Nova tower. (we can cast more pump spells here but those aren't even better than casting Grow from the ashes with no targets.)
What's really powerful are all the things on the bottom of the stack which let us rebuild everything above it even bigger.
Edit: I like Deedlit11's explanation better.
Edit: Whoops, if we sacrifice the first Tragic Poet, we can't Quasiduplicate it. So we actually have to cast Quasiduplicate before we resolve the Purify Nova. In any case, the situation is the same; Quasiduplicate is not around to be able to copy Golgari Findbroker.
So this didn’t make sense. U cast 3 novas in a row without using any resources to get them back to a castable zone(2 is fine, 3 is not). U can have a million white mana at this point, u will still only be able to cast 2 in a row without at least using up a wrath nova to shuffle stuff back into the deck, which can then cast 2 times again, if u have the mana. If u don’t have the mana u will need to resolve the whole stack down to the draws, use a draw up to draw a nova and cast purify mode to start restocking white mana.
I don’t think u can go past 4 white mana anyway(not without wasting a lot of your towers anyway). Resolving more than 2 purify in a row doesn’t make more mana. We need the elephants back to get the lockets back which require using up wraths to facilitate. If u can go from 4->5(or more) white mana u should go infinite. We stay between 1-4 with the current towers inside towers structure. Going beyond that amount should be problematic.
So another issue to watch out for is this. Quasiduplicate can make another copy of Sphinx. This means we can have 2 Sphinx dies trigger for any given wrath. This is concerning because it allows us to get lockets back from the deck without having to use draws. It’s not efficient but we can mill 2 lockets out of the deck back into graveyard and then with blessing reshuffle on the stack use 1 elephant to get them back. Not sure it’s an issue but it might be. We then resolve a wrath and we have effectively reset our misplaced lockets without using draws. Just a thought ....
Deed: u need to quasi before purify anyway. If u don’t u can’t even cast quasi as it’s on top of the deck and u will have no precognition field to allow u to cast it in any capacity.