Claim the Firstborn looks okay - the only problem I could think of is if it untapped something that came in tapped, but that is just our nonbasic lands, which aren't creatures.
I think we only need two mana for Vivien's Arkbow, to bring out Maraleaf Pixies? Each Pixie produces 1 blue and 4 green, so we should profit 2 green each time, enough for our castings of [c}Quasiduplicate[/c] and Devious Cover-Up. Am I missing any other costs?
Edit: Oh right, we need Collision as well. But, we get both Pixies each time we cast either of Quasiduplicate or Devious Cover-Up. So we spend 2+2+2 mana for two Pixies, which gives us 8 green mana, so we net 2 each round. We either spend both when we cast Devious Cover-Up, or we spend one when we cast Quasiduplicate. So we have a net gain of green mana overall.
Edit: Hmm, we can do much better at the start actually, if we use Revival // Revenge. We can cast Repeated Reverberation, Revenge, and then Revenge again, to take us to 100 life. That should be plenty to get started and get some pretty high combos. However, it looks like Dance of the Manse is the only way to animate enchantments, and therefore make copies of them. So we still can only put four Smothering Tithes into play for the first Happily Ever After. So our damage will still be between 3 -> 3 -> 51 -> 13 and 3 -> 3 -> 52 -> 13. (I haven't found a way to shuffle the opponent's graveyard into their library without going infinite - Emergency Powers will go infinite now that we can counter it, and so will Loaming Shaman.)
Hmm, I think we can have [c}Spark Double[/c] and two copies of Maraleaf Pixie, if we have no Mystic Forge or Karn, the Great Creator. Without any support, we won't have any way to recycle all the creatures without using Spark Double to help, so I don't see an infinite there.
I think Revival // Revenge is worse than Grasping Thrull, since it halves the opponent's life each time, so we can only use it about log(X) times when the opponent has X life. But, we want to have Revival // Revenge anyway, so Grasping Thrull becomes an extra card that we can add to make a small improvement - but it's probably a pretty low priority.
But Log(X) is still enough for another layer? the difference between them gets eaten by the notation.
And I don't think we can have 2 pixies. We can make a blank token spark double by copying the original, The original can be blank because of Riot, and the token can copy the original and enter with a +1/+1 counter not due to riot, but because it is Spark Double. and then use that as the Quasiduplicate target to make arkbows. Meanwhile, the original can start being a pixie and make extra U.
Yup, log(X) is good enough for another layer. So, Grasping Thrull is just an "extra card" that we can use for a minute advantage, and it's pretty far down the list.
Ah, interesting trick. (I had to look at the rules again - we don't get the +1/+1 counter if we apply another copy effect, but we're just copying a Spark Double and not using it to copy anything, so we do get the counter!) So yeah, we actually gain 8 green mana from the Pixies and need to spend 8, so we won't have any extra for Quasiduplicate and Devious Cover-Up. So, if it winds up being best to have 4 Leyline of Abundance at the start, we can just add a Leafkin Druid. If not, we can just retrieve an extra Leyline of Abundance with [c}Dance of the Manse[/c], and make copies as needed.
Edit: Oh wait, we don't have an easy way to recycle Leafkin Druid. Well gee... I guess we have to add Return to Nature if the 4 Leyline start works out the best. Unless there are enough better cards that we would be willing to use Bolas's Citadel to destroy a Leyline instead.
(another case of an edit not going through... not sure why this happens)
Edit: Oh, we can just use Aether Gust, much cheaper.
Yeah, at this point Return to nature looks like it would only be useful to shave card slots by going fown to 1 Smothering Tithe and one Happily ever after, but I doubt we are going to be that pressed for space.
Start with 2 Leylines of Abundance, 1 Leyline of Anticipation, 17 life, 0 floating, 1 card in hand, 0 storm after Bolas's Citadel is cast.
Cast Repeated Reverberation, 13 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 1 storm.
Cast Revenge, 56 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 2 storm.
Cast Revenge, 100 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Thousand-Year Storm, 94 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Clackbridge Troll, 89 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Angel of Vitality, 86 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, 85 life, 8G 4U floating, 1 card, 4 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 84 life, 18G 9U floating, 1 card, 5 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 83 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 6 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, resolve TYS trigger - 82 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 7 storm.
Respond by casting Devious Cover-Up from our hand - 82 life, 28G 13U floating, 0 cards, 8 storm.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 78 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 9 storm, 9 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 74 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 10 storm, 28 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 70 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 11 storm, 67 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a Claim the Firstborn, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 66 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 12 storm, 146 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 62 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 13 storm, 305 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 58 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 14 storm, 624 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 54 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 15 storm, 1263 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 50 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 16 storm, 2542 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Quasiduplicate - 47 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 17 storm.
Get 5101 copies. Wind up with 3828 Angels of Vitality, 1275 Clackbridge Trolls, and 3825 Goat tokens under the opponent's control.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 43 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 18 storm, 18 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 39 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 19 storm, 55 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 35 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 20 storm, 130 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 31 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 21 storm, 281 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 27 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 22 storm, 584 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 23 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 23 storm, 1191 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 19 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 24 storm, 2406 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Role Reversal - 16 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 25 storm.
Get 4837 copies.
Exchange 3825 Angels of Vitality over to the opponent, for Goat tokens.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 12 life.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 8 life.
Cast Smothering TIthe - 4 life.
Cast Happily Ever After - 9 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, opponent has 3831 life.
Cast Venture Deeper, put all the cards in our library into the graveyard. 8 life, 26 storm.
Cast Dance of the Manse from our hand, return all enchantments and artifacts from our graveyard as animated creatures, including Leyline of Abundance, 3 Thousand-Year Storms, Rhythm of the Wild, Kiora Bests the Sea God, Vivien's Arkbow, Smothering Tithe, but not another Happily Ever After. 8 life, 27 storm.
Resolve 4 Devious Cover-Up, counter 4 CtFs, shuffle 16 cards into the library.
Cast Vindictive Vampire. 4 life, 27 storm.
Cast Collision. Resolve a TYS trigger, destroy Maraleaf Pixie, gain 4 life. 6 life, 28 storm. Opponent has 3830 life.
Respond by casting Disentomb. Resolve one TYS trigger, bringing Maraleaf Pixie, Spark Double, Frilled Mystic, Scholar of the Ages, and Beanstalk Giant to our hand. 5 life, 29 storm.
Play Maraleaf Pixie from our hand.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, gaining 468 blue and green mana. 4 life, 30 storm
Play all our creatures from our hand; cast Fertile Foosteps, getting the Mountain, and resolve Disentomb to fetch Beanstalk Giant back to our hand.
Respond with Quasiduplicate, get 121 copies. Create 121 more Angel of Vitality (124 total on our side) 2 life, 31 storm.
Resolve another Collision TYS trigger, destroy the Maraleaf Pixie, gain 125 life. 127 life, 31 storm, opponent has 3829 life.
With 127 life and with access to most of the cards, we can perform the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion, I believe. So things really take off from here.
Resolve 187,234 Repeated Reverberations.
REspond by casting Quasiduplicate - 19 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards 24 storm, get 374,492 copies.
Create 280,870 copies of Angel of Vitality, 93,622 copies of Clackbridge Troll.
Resolve remaining 140,421 Repeated Reverberations.
Respond by casting Role Reversal - 16 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 25 storm, get 280,867 copies.
Exchange 280,867 Angels of Vitality over to the opponent, for Goat tokens.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 12 life.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 8 life.
Cast Smothering TIthe - 4 life.
Cast Happily Ever After - 10 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, opponent has 280,873 life.
Cast Venture Deeper, putting the cards in our library into the graveyard. 9 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Respond by casting Vivien's Arkbow. 7 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Use the Arkbow to retrieve Scholar for the Ages, returning Dance of the Manse and Quasiduplicate. 7 life, 21G 13U 3W, 3 cards, 26 storm.
Cast Dance of the Manse from our hand, return all enchantments and artifacts from our graveyard as animated creatures, including Leyline of Abundance, 3 Thousand-Year Storms, Rhythm of the Wild, Kiora Bests the Sea God, Vivien's Arkbow, Smothering Tithe, but not another Happily Ever After. 7 life, 27 storm.
Cast Vindictive Vampire. 3 life, 27 storm.
Resolve the remaining Venture Deepers, putting our library into our graveyard.
Resolve 4 Devious Cover-Up, counter 1 CSU and 3 CtF, shuffling up to 16 cards into the library.
Resolve the last CtF, gaining 3 green and 1 blue mana.
Cast Collision. Resolve a TYS trigger, destroy Maraleaf Pixie, gain 5 life. 6 life, 28 storm. Opponent has 280,872 life.
Respond by casting Disentomb. Resolve one TYS trigger, bringing Maraleaf Pixie, Spark Double, Frilled Mystic, Scholar of the Ages, Arboreal Grazer, Beanstalk Giant to our hand. 5 life, 29 storm.
Play Maraleaf Pixie from our hand.
Cast Repeated Reverberation. 1 life, 30 storm, 117 RR triggers.
Respond with Quasiduplicate, get 355 copies. Create 355 more Angel of Vitality (359 total on our side) 1 life, 31 storm.
Resolve another Collision TYS trigger, destroy the Maraleaf Pixie, gain 360 life. 361 life, 31 storm, opponent has 280,871 life.
With 361 life and with access to most of the cards, we can perform the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion, I believe. So things really take off from here.
Edit: Hmmm... with 100 life we have more than enough to get all our cards out, and run the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion already. The problem is, we don't have enough Leyline of Abundances to pay all the generic mana costs that we need. Still, for each Claim the Firstborn that we cast, we add triple our storm count in mana, allowing us to quadruple our storm count with some cheap green and blue instants/sorceries. So we can still get about 7 layers up to Deafening Clarion, before putting the first Happily Ever After into play.
So, the best way to improve the start would be to figure out a way to run the stage combo, without having to cast Dance of the Manse first.
Well, the easy way to do that would be going back to Leafkin druid+scampering scorcher to provide enough green to operate the stage combo without any animated enchantments.
Edit: no we need arkbow to be animated to copy it.
Actually there's also another little bit of setup we need to do: we need to make a blank spark double token and then remove the real blank spark double. so it is free to be the second pixie, while a token stays behind to be a Quasiduplicate target and make non-legendary arkbows to fetch our creatures.
Leafkin Druid and scampering scorcher let Quasiduplicate make green, so we can fuel the stage's mana requirements.
I think the only difficult part of that is getting rid of the real Spark Double. Deafening Clarion will have a hard time getting rid of the real Spark Double without eliminating the token Spark Double as well. But Justice Strike or Flicker of Fate should work fine.
Actually, perhaps we can pair Justice Strike with Teysa Karlov as that will be more efficient than Deafening Clarion.
Edit: No, with Teysa Karlov, we can gain life with Justice Strike. But, Final Payment should work fine.
Edit: Looking at possible improvements to the chain, The Binding of the Titans could lead to significant improvements over Kiora Bests the Sea God, since it doesn't untap, so we could have tapped lands or Nyx Lotus come in later. Also we don't have to donate to the opponent, so problems that arise from that (like the Smothering Tithe problem) might not be an issue. However, the problem is that I don't know of a good way to put a land into play untapped. Chulane, Teller of Tales certainly looks like it will go infinite.
I guess that is a key thing to look for in upcoming sets - a good way to put a land onto the battlefield untapped.
Of the options granted to us by the spoilers, the combo that popped out to me is Terror of the peaks+sporeweb weaver+Invigorating Surge to get a ton of 1/1s and life. I think it'd go infinite with what we have though...
Start by tapping two Vivien's arkbow (discarding something we can get back with scholar of the ages) to find Maraleaf Pixie and Spark double as the second pixie.
They have haste thanks to Rhythm of the wild. Tap them for UU. (+2)
Cast collision of Collision // Colossus to kill the two tapped mana making fliers.
Cast Devious cover-up on the excess copies. (+0)
Let the first one resolve and shuffle the two blue creatures in.
Respond with Quasiduplicate on Frilled mystic to counter the two spells. (-2)
Let another copy resolve to get a Scholar of the ages to return the spells back to hand.
And another two resolve making two more arkbows.
We are now back where we started except we are down UU and have a bunch of quasiduplicates and devious cover ups on the stack, which can remake the blue mana. We can continue adding layers like this until we run out of U, making a giant stack of alternating quasiduplicates and cover ups, then when resolving we can remake almost exactly the same amount of blue we spent to make that many layers, except for the bottom layer where we don't get our mana back.
This is very dependent on both quasiduplicate and cover up costing the same amount of U.
For a better explanation of a stage combo, check out my article from last year or stakfish's article from the year before. Linked in the OP.
Turn 3:
black shockland (we'll need white too so Godless Shrine?) Bolas's Citadel 0 to 2 cards in hand, 0 to GU floating, with the sum of those totaling 2. 17 life.
From there we want to get to a state with:
Animated versions of all our enchantments/artifacts.
A blank Spark Double token.
All of the combo creatures in play, and the spells in our hand.
As much blue mana as we can make.
Then we can do the stage combo,
Then we can extend it via chaining the other unused resources.
hmm, that looks like that route can cut dance of the manse entirely making the setup to the stage combo much easier.
Though being able to copy lands might be a problem, would need to remove the gainland from the start. (and no treasure tokens in the layers either)
and the fight also seems possibly problematic,
I guess having red be late might work? using white to go into Rally of wings to untap the pixies?
Though red is the next easiest color to get and white is the hardest.
I'm not even seeing a good way to make white at all? Edit: oh just fetch a plains >.<
As to the start, it looks like we probably do want to open with 3 green 1 blue leyline and be left with a floating U mana after bolas's citadel.
assuming card slots aren't a big problem
spend the U to Venture Deeper milling a Creeping Chill, our dance of the manse, and some other cards
opp:17 us:20
Now we can Repeated Reverberation + Revival // revenge and resolve all 3
opp:17 us:10
opp:8 us:20
opp:4 us:40
opp:2 us:80
cast another
opp:1 us:148
This is 48 life better than the best opening we had before. (it does exile a card, but I don't think that'll be our bottleneck)
From here we can easily set up the rest of our combo via bolas's citadel.
Assuming we have claim the firstborn, we can make a bunch of initial green/blue
Going through Deedlit's line from post 107, the extra 48 life lets us cleanly get an extra 12 Repeated Reverberations to use before we make the opponent gain life.
Edit:
Then from there, one way to save cards is to have some way to kill enchantments, Crushing canopy? to kill our TYS, leyline, and smothering tithe so that they can be animated without an extra copy.
It also has an attached wheel effect, so it seems likely to go infinite.
and we'd still need to get to 6 mana either way and then also proliferate for Chandra before getting any benefit, i don't think that is particularly easier than Bolas's Citadel.
We can potntially still use something like Vivien, Monster's advocate which I think can just replace the Vivien's arkbow loops we were using. (Edit: no, as pixie costs U)
Also worth noting that if we cut spark double and only have one pixie there is a second version of the stage combo with repudiate // replicate and Clear the Mind which is less preferred due to drawing a card. But maybe access to a blank spark double is too powerful.
The main thing that a blank Spark Double does is removing legendary status from stuff we're copying*, which is currently necessary for arkbow usage; and the only other side effect I can see is copying citadel. Citadel's activated ability could potentially be an issue as it allows for sacrificing pixies without casting Collision. But doing so costs opponent life, a higher level resource, so it's probably fine. It does disallow stifle effects like repudiate though.
*also allows planeswalkers to be copied, which is not currently useful nor problematic.
Yeah, though some of the layer extensions may not be possible with multiple copies of legends/pws.
For example Kinnan, Bonder prodigy works with 2 pixies (with Quasiduplicate + Devious cover-up as before), and also potentially allows for some other extensions. Not sure if that's actually the direction we want to go, but is an option.
What I'm really after is a second stage, somehow, Not a higher order stage as our card pool seems too narrow, but a second stage to chain in. I'm not sure if it is possible, but if found would be huge.
I'm pretty sure that this stage would need to power the blue mana stage we already have, so it would have access to free reshuffles, copies of creatures and most artifacts/enchantments, creatures in library/play, killing fliers, hasty creature cards and UG mana.
Leaving as available: haste tokens, lands, untapping, card draw, life, opp's life, and WRB mana.
(It is a real shame that terrarion wasn't reprinted, because that would've been a pretty perfect card.)
Can we maybe do something with Mutate? Doesn't really look like it...
And the lands we have access to kind of suck too...
I had been thinking of something like Faeburrow elder to tap for exactly WUBRG, and need exactly WRB to get untapped again, but it seems difficult...
Welcome back Deedlit! No worries about this being less of a priority, It definitely takes a little bit to catch back up.
I'm currently trying to prove to myself that there's no way to make a second stage, having run into a bunch of dead ends.
Edit:
Currently trying to make Kinnan, Bonder prodigy work with one of the humans that tap for mana.
The idea being that Kinnan cant fetch them, but still allows the U stage to work.
I'm thinking something like Disentomb + murder to kill and recur Skull prophet? (disentomb+recast dork is BB just like murder is BB which is exactly how much the prophet taps for thanks to Kinnan)
How are we getting the pixie onto the battlefield in this version? Is it through Kinnan's ability? Because that costs U.
The other issue is how to actually use the output of the black mana stage to generate blue mana?
Revival//Revenge seems nice for card slot efficiency; we could use the revival half as part of the black stage and then later on use the revenge half for a life layer fueled by either opponent life or by white mana.
Edit: A potential use for mutate is to add/remove legendary status. Mutating something legendary onto something and then cloning it would be a clunky way to kill it; but peraps more interestingly mutating something nonlegendary onto an otherwise legendary permanent would allow us to have copies of it. Notably, we can NOT get multiple copies of Kinnan this way, because he's a human, while we'd still be able to copy things like arkbows.
Claim the Firstborn looks okay - the only problem I could think of is if it untapped something that came in tapped, but that is just our nonbasic lands, which aren't creatures.
I think we only need two mana for Vivien's Arkbow, to bring out Maraleaf Pixies? Each Pixie produces 1 blue and 4 green, so we should profit 2 green each time, enough for our castings of [c}Quasiduplicate[/c] and Devious Cover-Up. Am I missing any other costs?
Edit: Oh right, we need Collision as well. But, we get both Pixies each time we cast either of Quasiduplicate or Devious Cover-Up. So we spend 2+2+2 mana for two Pixies, which gives us 8 green mana, so we net 2 each round. We either spend both when we cast Devious Cover-Up, or we spend one when we cast Quasiduplicate. So we have a net gain of green mana overall.
Edit: Hmm, we can do much better at the start actually, if we use Revival // Revenge. We can cast Repeated Reverberation, Revenge, and then Revenge again, to take us to 100 life. That should be plenty to get started and get some pretty high combos. However, it looks like Dance of the Manse is the only way to animate enchantments, and therefore make copies of them. So we still can only put four Smothering Tithes into play for the first Happily Ever After. So our damage will still be between 3 -> 3 -> 51 -> 13 and 3 -> 3 -> 52 -> 13. (I haven't found a way to shuffle the opponent's graveyard into their library without going infinite - Emergency Powers will go infinite now that we can counter it, and so will Loaming Shaman.)
Revival//Revenge seems better than Grasping Thrull, though a little bit trickier to cast.
I think Revival // Revenge is worse than Grasping Thrull, since it halves the opponent's life each time, so we can only use it about log(X) times when the opponent has X life. But, we want to have Revival // Revenge anyway, so Grasping Thrull becomes an extra card that we can add to make a small improvement - but it's probably a pretty low priority.
And I don't think we can have 2 pixies. We can make a blank token spark double by copying the original, The original can be blank because of Riot, and the token can copy the original and enter with a +1/+1 counter not due to riot, but because it is Spark Double. and then use that as the Quasiduplicate target to make arkbows. Meanwhile, the original can start being a pixie and make extra U.
Ah, interesting trick. (I had to look at the rules again - we don't get the +1/+1 counter if we apply another copy effect, but we're just copying a Spark Double and not using it to copy anything, so we do get the counter!) So yeah, we actually gain 8 green mana from the Pixies and need to spend 8, so we won't have any extra for Quasiduplicate and Devious Cover-Up. So, if it winds up being best to have 4 Leyline of Abundance at the start, we can just add a Leafkin Druid. If not, we can just retrieve an extra Leyline of Abundance with [c}Dance of the Manse[/c], and make copies as needed.
Edit: Oh wait, we don't have an easy way to recycle Leafkin Druid. Well gee... I guess we have to add Return to Nature if the 4 Leyline start works out the best. Unless there are enough better cards that we would be willing to use Bolas's Citadel to destroy a Leyline instead.
(another case of an edit not going through... not sure why this happens)
Edit: Oh, we can just use Aether Gust, much cheaper.
Start with 2 Leylines of Abundance, 1 Leyline of Anticipation, 17 life, 0 floating, 1 card in hand, 0 storm after Bolas's Citadel is cast.
Cast Repeated Reverberation, 13 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 1 storm.
Cast Revenge, 56 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 2 storm.
Cast Revenge, 100 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Thousand-Year Storm, 94 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Clackbridge Troll, 89 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Angel of Vitality, 86 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, 85 life, 8G 4U floating, 1 card, 4 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 84 life, 18G 9U floating, 1 card, 5 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 83 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 6 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, resolve TYS trigger - 82 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 7 storm.
Respond by casting Devious Cover-Up from our hand - 82 life, 28G 13U floating, 0 cards, 8 storm.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 78 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 9 storm, 9 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 74 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 10 storm, 28 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 70 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 11 storm, 67 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a Claim the Firstborn, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 66 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 12 storm, 146 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 62 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 13 storm, 305 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 58 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 14 storm, 624 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 54 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 15 storm, 1263 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 50 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 16 storm, 2542 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Quasiduplicate - 47 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 17 storm.
Get 5101 copies. Wind up with 3828 Angels of Vitality, 1275 Clackbridge Trolls, and 3825 Goat tokens under the opponent's control.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 43 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 18 storm, 18 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 39 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 19 storm, 55 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 35 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 20 storm, 130 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 31 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 21 storm, 281 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 27 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 22 storm, 584 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 23 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 23 storm, 1191 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 19 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 24 storm, 2406 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Role Reversal - 16 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 25 storm.
Get 4837 copies.
Exchange 3825 Angels of Vitality over to the opponent, for Goat tokens.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 12 life.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 8 life.
Cast Smothering TIthe - 4 life.
Cast Happily Ever After - 9 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, opponent has 3831 life.
Cast Venture Deeper, put all the cards in our library into the graveyard. 8 life, 26 storm.
Cast Dance of the Manse from our hand, return all enchantments and artifacts from our graveyard as animated creatures, including Leyline of Abundance, 3 Thousand-Year Storms, Rhythm of the Wild, Kiora Bests the Sea God, Vivien's Arkbow, Smothering Tithe, but not another Happily Ever After. 8 life, 27 storm.
Resolve 4 Devious Cover-Up, counter 4 CtFs, shuffle 16 cards into the library.
Cast Vindictive Vampire. 4 life, 27 storm.
Cast Collision. Resolve a TYS trigger, destroy Maraleaf Pixie, gain 4 life. 6 life, 28 storm. Opponent has 3830 life.
Respond by casting Disentomb. Resolve one TYS trigger, bringing Maraleaf Pixie, Spark Double, Frilled Mystic, Scholar of the Ages, and Beanstalk Giant to our hand. 5 life, 29 storm.
Play Maraleaf Pixie from our hand.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, gaining 468 blue and green mana. 4 life, 30 storm
Play all our creatures from our hand; cast Fertile Foosteps, getting the Mountain, and resolve Disentomb to fetch Beanstalk Giant back to our hand.
Respond with Quasiduplicate, get 121 copies. Create 121 more Angel of Vitality (124 total on our side) 2 life, 31 storm.
Resolve another Collision TYS trigger, destroy the Maraleaf Pixie, gain 125 life. 127 life, 31 storm, opponent has 3829 life.
With 127 life and with access to most of the cards, we can perform the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion, I believe. So things really take off from here.
Edit: We can do better, by chaining 15 Repeated Reverberations together, and casting both Quasiduplicate and [c}Role Reversal[/c] at the end:
Start with 2 Leylines of Abundance, 1 Leyline of Anticipation, 17 life, 0 floating, 1 card in hand, 0 storm after Bolas's Citadel is cast.
Cast Repeated Reverberation, 13 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 1 storm.
Cast Revenge, 56 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 2 storm.
Cast Revenge, 100 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Thousand-Year Storm, 94 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Clackbridge Troll, 89 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Angel of Vitality, 86 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, 85 life, 8G 4U floating, 1 card, 4 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 84 life, 18G 9U floating, 1 card, 5 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 83 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 6 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, resolve TYS trigger - 82 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 7 storm.
Respond by casting Devious Cover-Up from our hand - 82 life, 28G 13U floating, 0 cards, 8 storm.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 78 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 9 storm, 9 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 74 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 10 storm, 28 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 70 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 11 storm, 67 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a Claim the Firstborn, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 66 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 12 storm, 146 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 62 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 13 storm, 305 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 58 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 14 storm, 624 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 54 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 15 storm, 1263 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 50 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 16 storm, 2542 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 46 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 17 storm, 5101 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 42 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 18 storm, 10,220 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 38 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 19 storm, 20,459 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 34 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 20 storm, 40,938 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 30 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 21 storm, 81,897 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 26 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 22 storm, 163,816 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 22 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 23 storm, 327,655 RR triggers.
Resolve 187,234 Repeated Reverberations.
REspond by casting Quasiduplicate - 19 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards 24 storm, get 374,492 copies.
Create 280,870 copies of Angel of Vitality, 93,622 copies of Clackbridge Troll.
Resolve remaining 140,421 Repeated Reverberations.
Respond by casting Role Reversal - 16 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 25 storm, get 280,867 copies.
Exchange 280,867 Angels of Vitality over to the opponent, for Goat tokens.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 12 life.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 8 life.
Cast Smothering TIthe - 4 life.
Cast Happily Ever After - 10 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, opponent has 280,873 life.
Cast Venture Deeper, putting the cards in our library into the graveyard. 9 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Respond by casting Vivien's Arkbow. 7 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Use the Arkbow to retrieve Scholar for the Ages, returning Dance of the Manse and Quasiduplicate. 7 life, 21G 13U 3W, 3 cards, 26 storm.
Cast Dance of the Manse from our hand, return all enchantments and artifacts from our graveyard as animated creatures, including Leyline of Abundance, 3 Thousand-Year Storms, Rhythm of the Wild, Kiora Bests the Sea God, Vivien's Arkbow, Smothering Tithe, but not another Happily Ever After. 7 life, 27 storm.
Cast Vindictive Vampire. 3 life, 27 storm.
Resolve the remaining Venture Deepers, putting our library into our graveyard.
Resolve 4 Devious Cover-Up, counter 1 CSU and 3 CtF, shuffling up to 16 cards into the library.
Resolve the last CtF, gaining 3 green and 1 blue mana.
Cast Collision. Resolve a TYS trigger, destroy Maraleaf Pixie, gain 5 life. 6 life, 28 storm. Opponent has 280,872 life.
Respond by casting Disentomb. Resolve one TYS trigger, bringing Maraleaf Pixie, Spark Double, Frilled Mystic, Scholar of the Ages, Arboreal Grazer, Beanstalk Giant to our hand. 5 life, 29 storm.
Play Maraleaf Pixie from our hand.
Cast Repeated Reverberation. 1 life, 30 storm, 117 RR triggers.
Respond with Quasiduplicate, get 355 copies. Create 355 more Angel of Vitality (359 total on our side) 1 life, 31 storm.
Resolve another Collision TYS trigger, destroy the Maraleaf Pixie, gain 360 life. 361 life, 31 storm, opponent has 280,871 life.
With 361 life and with access to most of the cards, we can perform the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion, I believe. So things really take off from here.
Edit: Hmmm... with 100 life we have more than enough to get all our cards out, and run the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion already. The problem is, we don't have enough Leyline of Abundances to pay all the generic mana costs that we need. Still, for each Claim the Firstborn that we cast, we add triple our storm count in mana, allowing us to quadruple our storm count with some cheap green and blue instants/sorceries. So we can still get about 7 layers up to Deafening Clarion, before putting the first Happily Ever After into play.
So, the best way to improve the start would be to figure out a way to run the stage combo, without having to cast Dance of the Manse first.
Edit: no we need arkbow to be animated to copy it.
Edit: Oh, I see - we can just use Quasiduplicate to make as many copies of Leafkin Druid as we choose. Nice.
Leafkin Druid and scampering scorcher let Quasiduplicate make green, so we can fuel the stage's mana requirements.
Actually, perhaps we can pair Justice Strike with Teysa Karlov as that will be more efficient than Deafening Clarion.
Edit: No, with Teysa Karlov, we can gain life with Justice Strike. But, Final Payment should work fine.
Edit: Looking at possible improvements to the chain, The Binding of the Titans could lead to significant improvements over Kiora Bests the Sea God, since it doesn't untap, so we could have tapped lands or Nyx Lotus come in later. Also we don't have to donate to the opponent, so problems that arise from that (like the Smothering Tithe problem) might not be an issue. However, the problem is that I don't know of a good way to put a land into play untapped. Chulane, Teller of Tales certainly looks like it will go infinite.
I guess that is a key thing to look for in upcoming sets - a good way to put a land onto the battlefield untapped.
Which appears to be:
Leyline of abundance + Maraleaf Pixie into Bolas's Citadel on turn 3
Using Dance of the Manse to animate TYS, some artifacts, Happily Ever after and Smothering tithe to limit our mana to our opponent's deck.
Setting us up for the stage combo of:
Devious cover-up (for reshuffle) + Quasiduplicate (on Frilled Mystic to counter the spells and scholar of the ages to get them back)
Killing the pixies with collision // colossus to let them be reshuffled, using Vivien's Arkbow to refetch the pixie+spark double of pixie for exactly enough blue mana (only nontokens have haste via rhythm of the wild which also enables a blank Spark double to make copies of our legends)
Then various layer extensions off of that.
Does that skeleton look about right?
Of the options granted to us by the spoilers, the combo that popped out to me is Terror of the peaks+sporeweb weaver+Invigorating Surge to get a ton of 1/1s and life. I think it'd go infinite with what we have though...
The main combo is far beyond x^^x already. The main stage combo is x->x->x. which is x^^...(x copies of ^)...^^x
After activating Emergence zone/having Leyline of anticipation and with Thousand-Year Storm and others animated via Dance of the manse we begin with X blue mana (and a lot of green/colorless)
Start by tapping two Vivien's arkbow (discarding something we can get back with scholar of the ages) to find Maraleaf Pixie and Spark double as the second pixie.
They have haste thanks to Rhythm of the wild. Tap them for UU. (+2)
Cast collision of Collision // Colossus to kill the two tapped mana making fliers.
Cast Devious cover-up on the excess copies. (+0)
Let the first one resolve and shuffle the two blue creatures in.
Respond with Quasiduplicate on Frilled mystic to counter the two spells. (-2)
Let another copy resolve to get a Scholar of the ages to return the spells back to hand.
And another two resolve making two more arkbows.
We are now back where we started except we are down UU and have a bunch of quasiduplicates and devious cover ups on the stack, which can remake the blue mana. We can continue adding layers like this until we run out of U, making a giant stack of alternating quasiduplicates and cover ups, then when resolving we can remake almost exactly the same amount of blue we spent to make that many layers, except for the bottom layer where we don't get our mana back.
This is very dependent on both quasiduplicate and cover up costing the same amount of U.
For a better explanation of a stage combo, check out my article from last year or stakfish's article from the year before. Linked in the OP.
turn 1:
4xLeyline of Abundance (do we actually need 4? can go down to as low as 2) (we might also want to start with Leyline of Anticipation)
Jungle hollow/Dismal backwater
Turn 2:
Watery grave/Overgrown tomb
Maraleaf Pixie
Turn 3:
black shockland (we'll need white too so Godless Shrine?)
Bolas's Citadel 0 to 2 cards in hand, 0 to GU floating, with the sum of those totaling 2. 17 life.
From there we want to get to a state with:
Animated versions of all our enchantments/artifacts.
A blank Spark Double token.
All of the combo creatures in play, and the spells in our hand.
As much blue mana as we can make.
Then we can do the stage combo,
Then we can extend it via chaining the other unused resources.
(ex: claim the firstborn turns a red into a bunch of blue)
Being ultimately limited by the opponent's deck size via Happily Ever After.
Though being able to copy lands might be a problem, would need to remove the gainland from the start. (and no treasure tokens in the layers either)
and the fight also seems possibly problematic,
I guess having red be late might work? using white to go into Rally of wings to untap the pixies?
Though red is the next easiest color to get and white is the hardest.
I'm not even seeing a good way to make white at all? Edit: oh just fetch a plains >.<
As to the start, it looks like we probably do want to open with 3 green 1 blue leyline and be left with a floating U mana after bolas's citadel.
assuming card slots aren't a big problem
spend the U to Venture Deeper milling a Creeping Chill, our dance of the manse, and some other cards
opp:17 us:20
Now we can Repeated Reverberation + Revival // revenge and resolve all 3
opp:17 us:10
opp:8 us:20
opp:4 us:40
opp:2 us:80
cast another
opp:1 us:148
This is 48 life better than the best opening we had before. (it does exile a card, but I don't think that'll be our bottleneck)
From here we can easily set up the rest of our combo via bolas's citadel.
Assuming we have claim the firstborn, we can make a bunch of initial green/blue
Going through Deedlit's line from post 107, the extra 48 life lets us cleanly get an extra 12 Repeated Reverberations to use before we make the opponent gain life.
Edit:
Then from there, one way to save cards is to have some way to kill enchantments, Crushing canopy? to kill our TYS, leyline, and smothering tithe so that they can be animated without an extra copy.
and we'd still need to get to 6 mana either way and then also proliferate for Chandra before getting any benefit, i don't think that is particularly easier than Bolas's Citadel.
We can potntially still use something like Vivien, Monster's advocate which I think can just replace the Vivien's arkbow loops we were using. (Edit: no, as pixie costs U)
Also worth noting that if we cut spark double and only have one pixie there is a second version of the stage combo with repudiate // replicate and Clear the Mind which is less preferred due to drawing a card. But maybe access to a blank spark double is too powerful.
*also allows planeswalkers to be copied, which is not currently useful nor problematic.
For example Kinnan, Bonder prodigy works with 2 pixies (with Quasiduplicate + Devious cover-up as before), and also potentially allows for some other extensions. Not sure if that's actually the direction we want to go, but is an option.
What I'm really after is a second stage, somehow, Not a higher order stage as our card pool seems too narrow, but a second stage to chain in. I'm not sure if it is possible, but if found would be huge.
I'm pretty sure that this stage would need to power the blue mana stage we already have, so it would have access to free reshuffles, copies of creatures and most artifacts/enchantments, creatures in library/play, killing fliers, hasty creature cards and UG mana.
Leaving as available: haste tokens, lands, untapping, card draw, life, opp's life, and WRB mana.
(It is a real shame that terrarion wasn't reprinted, because that would've been a pretty perfect card.)
Can we maybe do something with Mutate? Doesn't really look like it...
And the lands we have access to kind of suck too...
I had been thinking of something like Faeburrow elder to tap for exactly WUBRG, and need exactly WRB to get untapped again, but it seems difficult...
But, I'm looking to get back into it! It's just that I've forgotten everything, so I need to review.
I'm currently trying to prove to myself that there's no way to make a second stage, having run into a bunch of dead ends.
Edit:
Currently trying to make Kinnan, Bonder prodigy work with one of the humans that tap for mana.
The idea being that Kinnan cant fetch them, but still allows the U stage to work.
The relevant humans we have are: skull prophet, humble naturalist, and priest of forgotten gods. Which makes black mana look promising for a possible stage.
I'm thinking something like Disentomb + murder to kill and recur Skull prophet? (disentomb+recast dork is BB just like murder is BB which is exactly how much the prophet taps for thanks to Kinnan)
(edit: Corpse churn +ritual of soot is better to not target?)
This also lets us kill and recur the pixies to be plus blue while running it.
This seems possibly promising to me, but I'm not at all sure it fully works.
rough decklist: Note there's no Spark double or Vivien's arkbow
1 Leyline of abundance
2 Leyline of abundance
3 Leyline of abundance
4 jungle hollow
5 watery grave
6 maraleaf pixie
7 Bolas's Citadel
8 Merfolk SecretKeeper
9 ???
10 Thousand-Year Storm
11 Dance of the manse
12 Leyline of anticipation
13 Rhythm of the Wild
U stage:
14 Maraleaf pixie 2
15 Frilled Mystic
16 Scholar of the ages
17 Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
18 Quasiduplicate
19 Devious Cover-Up
20 Skull prophet
21 Ritual of Soot
22 Corpse Churn
layers
23 Claim the firstborn
24 Repeated Reverberation
25 ...
If this works its x->x->x->x->6 ish depending on the number of layers right? I'm super rusty with chained arrows.
Edit2: not seeing any obvious problems with this still, need a second opinion/sanity check. I feel like I'm probably missing something.
Could replace Corpse Churn with Revival // Revenge and then go into white mana?
The other issue is how to actually use the output of the black mana stage to generate blue mana?
Revival//Revenge seems nice for card slot efficiency; we could use the revival half as part of the black stage and then later on use the revenge half for a life layer fueled by either opponent life or by white mana.
Edit: A potential use for mutate is to add/remove legendary status. Mutating something legendary onto something and then cloning it would be a clunky way to kill it; but peraps more interestingly mutating something nonlegendary onto an otherwise legendary permanent would allow us to have copies of it. Notably, we can NOT get multiple copies of Kinnan this way, because he's a human, while we'd still be able to copy things like arkbows.