Hmmm, Leafkin Avenger would be very nice to have, but unfortunately it needs a Planeswalker in addition, and we can't exile either one until the end of the combo. So, Electrodominance would allow for an extra draw, provided of course we can still get started with it.
So, it seems like the non-creature cards that we can conceivably exile are:
Also, if we could somehow replace [c}Ritual of Soot[/c] with something that doesn't hit all CMC 3 or less creatures, then we could exile Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi, Duskfang Mentor, and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. But, I don't see anything that we can replace it with. If we could go down to 1 black mana per layer, then we could use say Call of the Death-Dweller and Eliminate. But, Kinnan makes Skull Prophet tap for two, and we are currently using Kinnan to bring back Maraleaf Pixie without bringing back Skull Prophet. So we would have to find another way to do that.
We can exile all of the leylines, as we only need so many copies of each one.
Bolas's citadel would need to be defaced then reanimated as a 4/4, then copied, but that seems possible.
We can even exile the TYS at the very end, though that does kind of kill the life stage due to targeting (and ruins the black stage too, without Gruesome Menagerie)
And I assume that the tradeoff of some inefficiency in the combo (most Revivals fizzle, none of the gruesome menageries do) is negligible?
Edit:
Cling to dust really is the best early lifegain option we have? this line still seems a few life/mana short even with 12 life from cling to dusts.
Drowned secrets 14
Rhythm 11
Kinnan 9 gy:2
Pixie 7 3UU gy:4
Cling to dust 6->9 gy:3
TYS 3 gy:5
shock(x2) 2
Cling to dust(x3) 1->10 gy:2
revival(x4) 8 9UUUUBB
Smothering tithe 4
Happily ever after 1->6 9UUUUBBW Hand:2
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing leyline, TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline (+1 more?) Hand:0
in response to HEA, quasiduplicate(x7) 3 UUUBB
Not sure where to go from here.
edit:
Hmm if the deckspace is not so much at a premium anymore, we can have extra copies of some of our combo cards to help out early, notably an extra copy of shock and revival would probably give us enough mana to tutor up the missing creatures and start really comboing (though we are one life short of just casting those)
Edit: Think I cracked it:
same as above
...
Happily ever after 1->6 9UUUUBBW Hand:2
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline +4th leyline of abundance (+1 more?) Hand:0 gy:3
in response to HEA, shock#2 (x7 but 5 fizzle) 5
Revival#2 3 8UUUUUBBBB
Kinnan shipwreck dowser 2UUUUBBBB gy:1
Quasiduplicate(x7/9) 1UUBBBB gy:3
return quasiduplicate, revival, ritual of soot, crushing canopy make +5 TYS gy:1
Ritual of soot(x1/55) UBB
Revival(1/6 TYS) 8UUUBB
Crushing canopy the pixie
Revival(2/6 TYS) 9UUUUUBB
Kinnan the Frilled mystic countering the original ritual of soot 6UUUUBB
quasiduplicate 2UUBB
Ritual of soot UU
Revival(3/6TYS)
And now we have everything?
even better:
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline +4th leyline of abundance (+TYS#2) Hand:0 gy:2
hmm with extra copies of the enchantments, we almost don't even need to cast crushing canopy early, we'd need to mill more.
Edit:
hmm, is it worth exiling another 5 or so creatures to be able to spend 12 life on the remaining smothering tithes for the first happily ever after? I think so, as white is a very expensive resource
Then something like dazzling lights+Cling to dust#3 right before casting the first smothering tithe works (and gives us 2 extra storm for the first iteration of the combo).
I forgot that the opponent can play lands and just pay for the first smothering tithe trigger, rendering most of the previous lines useless.
after fixing that and some more optimizations, my line for the startup is:
Turn 1: gruul guildgate, 3x leyline
Turn 2: shockland, Death prophet,
Turn 3: shockland, Bolas's Citadel, 16 life, 1 card in hand
Drowned secrets 14
Rhythm of the wild 11
Kinnan 9 gy:2
Pixie 7 3UU gy:4
Cling to dust 6->9 gy:3
TYS 3 gy:5
shock 2
Cling to dust #2 1->10 gy:2
revival 8 9UUUUBB
Dazzling lights 7 gy:12 (could mill more)
Cling to dust #3 6->21 gy:7
Smothering tithex4 5
Happily ever after 2->7 9UUUUBBWWW 2 cards in hand Final payment, sacrificing a smothering tithe, killing our dorks 5
Dance of the manse 3UUUBBWW for leylines, TYS#2-4, smothering tithe, and happily ever after#2 and rhythm of the wild #2
in response to the happily ever after, qusaiduplicate (x33) on TYS 2UBBWW
revival#2 (1/37 TYS trigger) dorks 3 10UUUBBBBWW
Kinnan shipwreck dowser 4UUBBBBWW
quasiduplicate (x371) 3BBBBWW
ritual of soot 1BBWW
revival #1 (1/400) XUUBBWW
Crushing canopy the pixie
revival #1 (2/400) XUUUUBBWW
Kinnan Frilled Mystic XUUUBBWW
Quasiduplicate (x5000) XUBBWW
Ritual of soot XUWW
In excess of the "normal" cards, this line adds: 9x Persistent Petitioners 3xCling to dust, 3x Smothering tithe, Drowned secrets, Dazzling lights, Rhythm of the wild, Final payment, Leyline of abundance, happily ever after, 1-3x TYS, and revival.
That totals 25 cards added, which just barely fits in the 25 remaining spots, Bringing my decklist to:
Exileable: 5x Leyline, 3x smothering tithe, 3x TYS, 3x Cling to dust, 3x lands, 2x rhythm of the wild, secrets, dance, HEA, lights, revival, payment.
totaling 25, only not exiling Bolas's citadel, replacing Final payment with say disenchant would work, but put us in a much worse position after Dance of the Manse. (possibly the card to cut is a TYS?)
Edit: maybe Mythos of snapdax? (keeping TYS, kinnan, and a treasure) that opens up more card slots too..
Edit: looks like Mythos of snapdax works for the start, and lets us have some extra space for ...? IDK what else we would want...
and optimizing the first combo where we barely have enough green/blue/black to get started seems complicated.
Edit: For the few final slots, I can only see like 3 options:
Extra copy of Ritual of Soot to be slightly more efficient at turning black into blue (this is super minor, but is kinda early) Repeated Reverberation, expensive, but potentially still helpful when we have life/red to spare in the layers after our stage combo. Might of the masses, cheapest way to increase storm more without impacting the combos.
Thoughts?
We actually have a bit more freedom than I thought because Kinnan also affects the treasures, so we actually start with 6 white. (not 8 as the opponent can pay for 1/4 smothering tithes) We spend 1 on Dance, but then after that we only make and spend white 2 at a time for Heliod's Intervention. Leaving us with 1 extra white that I don't think we have a good way to use. (Just casting a Return to safety from hand? but that requires drawing it?)
If so, then casting a second dance of the manse is much cheaper, and we can hold off on killing things until we can do it cheaply.
So from the earlier list, we can cut a Rhythm of the wild, and a Happily ever after, and add return to nature and 1 other card.
Return to nature also allows us to shave a mana in the U stage with Plummet over crushing canopy.
Now im thinking the best final card lis something that has the opponent discard all their lands so we can exile them with cling to dust, however the only suitable noncreature option is Aspect of Lamprey, which is pretty expensive to recur. We can't use Mind rot as that can target us and let us cheaply discard porcuparrot.
Well excess creatures only gain life with cling to dust while drawing a card is worth more than 3 life.
Burglar Rat's efficiency (it can even be fetched with kinnan) might be worth it though.
Edit:
Maybe Mausoleum Secrets? I think it lets us cut duskfang mentor for the Aspect of Lamprey. And can replace Revival in the black stage?
(Possibly we need to refactor the start as i do use two revivals for that?)
Edit
Nope, can't get Kinnan after a ritual of soot, so it just adds an extra unexileable card, making this worse than the rat unless we can find another way to squeeze it in.
Another potential option for discard could be Liliana's Triumph along with Liliana, Death Mage, which does take up 2 card slots but they're both noncreatures
Double checking that we don't have a good way to spend a single white mana? I don't think we ever want to spend a draw on Shepherd of the Flock. and Final Payment is not particularly efficient either.
(edit, well actually the card we draw isn't particularly important, as we only care about the triggers from Tolarian Kraken, so that implies that Aspect of Lamprey isn't too expensive. Though I'm pretty sure Cavern Whisperer's inefficiency in the life stage doesn't change the estimation. )
Mythos of Snapdax over Final Payment and Return to Nature does still let us cut a card and have an extra white. Though it is 2 more life to cast in the start. I just can't find any cards that are worth the life? Or a way to efficiently use one random extra white. (Gauntlets of Light at least lets us make a batch of red...? or maybe Flicker of Fate?)
Edit: The ozolith lets us cut Duskfang Mentor for an exileable Unexpected Fangs while being exileable itself. this doesn't work due to the stack being empty for combat.
Edit: I am now thinking that we can't do better than the 2 life and should just use something that helps out the most (which looks like its repeated reverberation?)
Edit: I think keeping Repeated Reverberation is possibly better than exiling it? Copying a Heliod's Intervention is worth a lot more than drawing a card.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, gets us to something like X->X->X->X->50->7?
Edit: the opponent only gets 50 draws, as they drew 7 to start, on their turns 1 and 2, and once in the setup, totaling 10 cards already drawn, leaving 50 left.
Edit: since we can cast Dance of the Manse a second time without penalty, Final payment (29) can be removed, though I think we still want to use that slot to cheaply kill our dorks at the start so another shock? Maybe just bouncing them with Sheperd is enough?
Edot: yeah sheperd is just better than the extra Revival (28), because it costs less life and we can wait until after Dancing for the TYSs and have 4 sets. I think we dont need all of them, so we can save them on the stack for our mutators.
So I hate to show up out of the blue and ruin things but the blue mana stage goes infinite. Quasi + mystic + dowser + pixie + haste + storm goes infinite. So on the stack we target something with the original quasi. Then tys triggers. We use the first of these to target mystic. We then use this new mystic to counter the original quasi and put it into our graveyard. Then our next quasi to resolve will be targeting dowser, which we use to get back quasi into our hand. The rest of the storm amount of quasi’s all target pixie. This gives us plenty of mana to recast quasi to restart this loop
Hopefully this doesn’t mess up the deck structure too badly if parts need to be replaced or removed entirely.
I’m glad these projects are still moving along tho. I haven’t read through everything yet but I did notice this loop.
Hope everyone is doing ok. At some point I will post the last parts of my vintage list I had been working on. I need to sit down and make sure I still remember how everything actually worked before I post any more write ups tho.
The copies of pixies don't have haste, since rhythm of the wild only gives haste to nontokens.
The fact that tokens can't have haste is important in all of the stages.
Looks like I need to read cards better I guess, or possibly read the full thread to see how things actually work. FWIW that is a very cool work around. Glad to see that you guys are still way better at this than me lol. It is still nice to see this have some traction tho. Kind of a nice distraction to get lost in for a bit.
Yeah, Rhythm of the wild is very important to only give the nontokens haste.
It is always nice to have more eyes on this as we don't want to miss something like that.
Also any suggestions for the last slots are welcome.
Edit: found an optimization for the start, though it does end with us now at one life:
Bolas's citadel 16
Drowned secrets 14
TYS 8
Kinnan 6 gy:4
Cling to dust 8 gy:3
Dazzling lights 7 gy:9
Cling to Dust 15 gy:6
Cling to Dust 23 gy:3
Smothering tithex4 7
Happily ever after 9
Rhythm of the wild 6
Maraleaf pixie 4 GGGUUWW gy:5
shock 3
revival 1 9G4U2B
Dance of the Manse 3G3U2BW gy:7
This only exiles 7 creatures for life, but does leave us at one life and that seems one short of enough get properly going (by casting Return to safety). we do at least have the storm to exile another, though we are running low on the GY for Dance at that point.
As a bonus, only exiling 7 creatures means we can use the full complement of seven dwarves as the fodder card, which is more elegant.
Edit: aha, we dont need to cast kinnan.
Bolas's citadel 16
Drowned secrets 14
TYS 8 gy:2
Dazzling lights 7 gy:6
Dazzling lights 6 gy:12
Cling to Dust 14 gy:9
Cling to Dust 25 gy:5
Smothering tithex4 9
Happily ever after 11
Rhythm of the wild 8
Maraleaf pixie 6 GGGUWW gy:7
shock 5
revival 3 9G3U2B (revive Kinnan gy:6)
Dance of the Manse 3G2U2BW gy:8 ->3 ish?
Usher to Safety 2
From there we can finish setting up and start to combo. We're down an initial U, and some starting life, but up 2 card draws later.
Also, I noticed this now but since we go to combat, we want to save our treasures so we don't lose the white. This means that we want to recast dance for what me missed (Rhythm, Tithe, Citadel and happily ever after) before we go to combat.
Edit:
Hmm we can also cut Drowned secrets for another dazzle and go:
TYS
Dazzle
Cling
Dazzle
Dazzle
Cling
to save another life and get an extra early storm, though we no longer have free mill and will need to recast dazzle before we can get all of the spells back.
Wilderness Reclamation was recently banned, which is not used in the current list but has been discussed for potential use before. The other bans are unlikely to have any impact on this challenge.
Not sure if it's been pointed out, but I believe the layers based on casting spells (Electrodominance and Heliod's Intervention) are actually worth 2 layers, since casting a Heliod's Intervention triggers X copies of TYS, each of which gains the opponent X life.
(edit: heliod's intervention isn't worth 2 layers, since the opponents life can only be used via combat with an empty stack, but electrodominance is)
As all of the TYS triggers will make the same number of copies of electrodominance, so we only get X^2 castings of shock per RR spend as opposed to just 2 castings of shock without electrodominance.
If thousand-year storm had the "..before it..." line removed then yes it would be worth more layers.
And yeah the Wilderness rec ban seems a bit late, it rotates in like 2 months anyway.
There was a though of using wilderness reclamation to get one late burst of untap triggers, but we'd still want to attack them later, and casting a Resurgence doesn't actually work in the end step.
Any thoughts on what to do with the space we now have? like 4 slots open now.
and the 61st card would be Assassin's Trophy, but its only +2 card draws.
hmm, with unique names being worth more now, I think Merfolk secretkeeper is better than a dazzling lights, as we can cast the dude later for saga triggers.
Are the extra copies of TYS and smothering tithe worth having over more unique cards? (tithe might be required to have enough mana at the start, but extra TYSs doesn't seem needed)
Hmm, that's a good point, we definitely want at least the second copy of TYS so we have one to be animated easily, but I don't think the others are nearly as vital.(and looks like 2 is barely sufficient for the rest of the start)
Smothering tithes give us extra white which is much more than an extra set of card draws. We'd fill the rest of the deck with them if we could.
Our resources are roughly in this order:
green <<<< blue <<<< black <<<< life << red << draws < opp's life < white < opp's card draws
If we are cutting 2 TYS, this is a good opportunity to slot in Reaper of Night for Harvest fear and let the life stage be slightly more efficient with Migratory Greathorn again.
with the last card actually being another adventure creature. (they have two names while Assassin's trophy only has the one), however there's not really anything else very useful in that set. Lovestruck beast is the cheapest at least.
Edit:
Actually, we dont need Return to nature is just worse than another adventure card, we can Return to safety and then frilled mystic the artifact and enchantments to get them in the yard.
hmm except for the white ones... they can be electrodominance - d!
(the mono green adventures are cheaper than a selesnea split card, but Assure lets us exile a few more creatures, and Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi, more than paying for casting Assemble.)
Edit: Uh oh, I think I've found an infinite in the deck.
Usher to Safety can bounce Bolas's Citadel, allowing it to be replayed and its activated ability to be used. This allows us to sacrifice the porcuparrot instead of using the shock; saving and thus generating life. It puts a trigger on the stack that will eventually make the opponent lose life, BUT we never actually have to resolve that trigger. Instead, we can continue the combo in response to this trigger, gaining infinite life, and then hitting the opponent with an Electrodominance.
Fortunately, it can be fixed by removing Usher to Safety; as I can't see any other way to reuse the citadel without using higher resources. (quasiduplicating it either makes a legendary noncreature citadel which can't be further quasiduplicated, or, if something was mutated onto it, a creature citadel without haste; it can't be reanimated with dance without white; and it can only be untapped by Kraken at a point where its sacrifice effect doesn't matter).
In order to keep the card draw layer working, then instead of going back to Crash through we can use Light up the stage + Fateful End as the stage spells, with 3 mutators instead of just the one greathorn - which can be unique for Medomai's Prophecy.
However, not having access to Usher does impact the start.
Thanks for your comments, good eye to catch some of the dumb errors from too many reconfigurations of the start.
Hmm, that does seem troubling, lets go through your combo line to be sure
Start:
Ping with mutator to gain a life
Bolas's citadel the mutant away
Kinnan them up
Pay the life to Usher to safety the greathorn and the citadel
replay citadel
remutate
Ping with mutator to gain a life
Yeah that does seem to work.
Do the triggers eventually resolving when we go to combat matter? no they don't really, We can get infinite mana and heal them for enough so the citadels don't kill them and then go to combat and kill them.
Good catch.
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So, it seems like the non-creature cards that we can conceivably exile are:
Leyline of Abundance x2
Watery Grave x2
Ketria Triome
Bolas's Citadel (maybe tricky?)
Leyline of Anticipation (maybe very tricky?)
Rhythm of the Wild
Dance of the Manse
25 extra cards
So 34 cards possible if we can make it work.
We could also exile Frilled Mystic, Shipwreck Dowser, Tolarian Kraken, and Keeper of Fables for some extra life.
Also, if we could somehow replace [c}Ritual of Soot[/c] with something that doesn't hit all CMC 3 or less creatures, then we could exile Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi, Duskfang Mentor, and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. But, I don't see anything that we can replace it with. If we could go down to 1 black mana per layer, then we could use say Call of the Death-Dweller and Eliminate. But, Kinnan makes Skull Prophet tap for two, and we are currently using Kinnan to bring back Maraleaf Pixie without bringing back Skull Prophet. So we would have to find another way to do that.
We can exile all of the leylines, as we only need so many copies of each one.
Bolas's citadel would need to be defaced then reanimated as a 4/4, then copied, but that seems possible.
We can even exile the TYS at the very end, though that does kind of kill the life stage due to targeting (and ruins the black stage too, without Gruesome Menagerie)
Ah yes, we can sacrifice the last Leyline of Abundance - so a potential 35 cards can be exiled. Exiling TYS is super-minimal since it comes after all the Happily Ever Afters, but yes we could do it. Gruesome Menagerie is certainly a possibility over Revival // Revenge, it depends whether we will have the green mana or not to use it. I guess maybe not. Also, Scholar of the Ages is a possibility over Shipwreck Dowser.
and Revival // revenge is way easier to fit in to the start than gruesome menagerie, life seems to be super tight at the start.
And I assume that the tradeoff of some inefficiency in the combo (most Revivals fizzle, none of the gruesome menageries do) is negligible?
Edit:
Cling to dust really is the best early lifegain option we have? this line still seems a few life/mana short even with 12 life from cling to dusts.
Drowned secrets 14
Rhythm 11
Kinnan 9 gy:2
Pixie 7 3UU gy:4
Cling to dust 6->9 gy:3
TYS 3 gy:5
shock(x2) 2
Cling to dust(x3) 1->10 gy:2
revival(x4) 8 9UUUUBB
Smothering tithe 4
Happily ever after 1->6 9UUUUBBW Hand:2
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing leyline, TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline (+1 more?) Hand:0
in response to HEA, quasiduplicate(x7) 3 UUUBB
Not sure where to go from here.
edit:
Hmm if the deckspace is not so much at a premium anymore, we can have extra copies of some of our combo cards to help out early, notably an extra copy of shock and revival would probably give us enough mana to tutor up the missing creatures and start really comboing (though we are one life short of just casting those)
Edit: Think I cracked it:
same as above
...
Happily ever after 1->6 9UUUUBBW Hand:2
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline +4th leyline of abundance (+1 more?) Hand:0 gy:3
in response to HEA, shock#2 (x7 but 5 fizzle) 5
Revival#2 3 8UUUUUBBBB
Kinnan shipwreck dowser 2UUUUBBBB gy:1
Quasiduplicate(x7/9) 1UUBBBB gy:3
return quasiduplicate, revival, ritual of soot, crushing canopy make +5 TYS gy:1
Ritual of soot(x1/55) UBB
Revival(1/6 TYS) 8UUUBB
Crushing canopy the pixie
Revival(2/6 TYS) 9UUUUUBB
Kinnan the Frilled mystic countering the original ritual of soot 6UUUUBB
quasiduplicate 2UUBB
Ritual of soot UU
Revival(3/6TYS)
And now we have everything?
even better:
crushing canopy(x5) 6 6UUUUBBW killing TYS, Smothering tithe, happily ever after,
Dance of the Manse 6 UUUBB reanimating all of those and the other leyline +4th leyline of abundance (+TYS#2) Hand:0 gy:2
hmm with extra copies of the enchantments, we almost don't even need to cast crushing canopy early, we'd need to mill more.
Edit:
hmm, is it worth exiling another 5 or so creatures to be able to spend 12 life on the remaining smothering tithes for the first happily ever after? I think so, as white is a very expensive resource
Then something like dazzling lights+Cling to dust#3 right before casting the first smothering tithe works (and gives us 2 extra storm for the first iteration of the combo).
after fixing that and some more optimizations, my line for the startup is:
Turn 1: gruul guildgate, 3x leyline
Turn 2: shockland, Death prophet,
Turn 3: shockland, Bolas's Citadel, 16 life, 1 card in hand
Drowned secrets 14
Rhythm of the wild 11
Kinnan 9 gy:2
Pixie 7 3UU gy:4
Cling to dust 6->9 gy:3
TYS 3 gy:5
shock 2
Cling to dust #2 1->10 gy:2
revival 8 9UUUUBB
Dazzling lights 7 gy:12 (could mill more)
Cling to dust #3 6->21 gy:7
Smothering tithex4 5
Happily ever after 2->7 9UUUUBBWWW 2 cards in hand
Final payment, sacrificing a smothering tithe, killing our dorks 5
Dance of the manse 3UUUBBWW for leylines, TYS#2-4, smothering tithe, and happily ever after#2 and rhythm of the wild #2
in response to the happily ever after, qusaiduplicate (x33) on TYS 2UBBWW
revival#2 (1/37 TYS trigger) dorks 3 10UUUBBBBWW
Kinnan shipwreck dowser 4UUBBBBWW
quasiduplicate (x371) 3BBBBWW
ritual of soot 1BBWW
revival #1 (1/400) XUUBBWW
Crushing canopy the pixie
revival #1 (2/400) XUUUUBBWW
Kinnan Frilled Mystic XUUUBBWW
Quasiduplicate (x5000) XUBBWW
Ritual of soot XUWW
In excess of the "normal" cards, this line adds: 9x Persistent Petitioners 3xCling to dust, 3x Smothering tithe, Drowned secrets, Dazzling lights, Rhythm of the wild, Final payment, Leyline of abundance, happily ever after, 1-3x TYS, and revival.
That totals 25 cards added, which just barely fits in the 25 remaining spots, Bringing my decklist to:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Gruul Guildgate
5 Watery Grave
6 Skull Prophet
7 Watery Grave
8 Bolas's Citadel
Engines:
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Leyline of Anticipation
11 Rhythm of the Wild
12 Dance of the Manse
U stage:
13 Maraleaf Pixie
14 Frilled Mystic
15 Shipwreck Dowser
16 Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
17 Quasiduplicate
18 Devious Cover-Up
19 Crushing Canopy
20 Ritual of Soot
21 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
22 Duskfang Mentor
23 Porcuparrot
24 Migratory Greathorn
25 Shock
26 Shepherd of the Flock
Red Mana:
27 Electrodominance
28 Nikya of the Old Ways
Card Draw:
29 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
30 Tolarian Kraken
31 Keeper of Fables
32 Response // Resurgence
Opponent Card Draw:
33 Heliod's Intervention
34 Smothering Tithe
35 Happily Ever After
Extras:
36 Rhythm of the Wild
37 Leyline of Abundance
38 Happily Ever After
39 Smothering Tithe
40 Smothering Tithe
41 Smothering Tithe
42 Thousand-Year Storm
43 Thousand-Year Storm
44 Thousand-Year Storm
45 Revival // Revenge
46 Final Payment
47 Drowned Secrets
48 Dazzling Lights
Early life:
49 Cling to Dust
50 Cling to Dust
51 Cling to Dust
9 Persistent Petitioners
Exileable: 5x Leyline, 3x smothering tithe, 3x TYS, 3x Cling to dust, 3x lands, 2x rhythm of the wild, secrets, dance, HEA, lights, revival, payment.
totaling 25, only not exiling Bolas's citadel, replacing Final payment with say disenchant would work, but put us in a much worse position after Dance of the Manse. (possibly the card to cut is a TYS?)
Edit: maybe Mythos of snapdax? (keeping TYS, kinnan, and a treasure) that opens up more card slots too..
Edit: looks like Mythos of snapdax works for the start, and lets us have some extra space for ...? IDK what else we would want...
and optimizing the first combo where we barely have enough green/blue/black to get started seems complicated.
Edit: For the few final slots, I can only see like 3 options:
Extra copy of Ritual of Soot to be slightly more efficient at turning black into blue (this is super minor, but is kinda early)
Repeated Reverberation, expensive, but potentially still helpful when we have life/red to spare in the layers after our stage combo.
Might of the masses, cheapest way to increase storm more without impacting the combos.
Thoughts?
If so, then casting a second dance of the manse is much cheaper, and we can hold off on killing things until we can do it cheaply.
So from the earlier list, we can cut a Rhythm of the wild, and a Happily ever after, and add return to nature and 1 other card.
Return to nature also allows us to shave a mana in the U stage with Plummet over crushing canopy.
Now im thinking the best final card lis something that has the opponent discard all their lands so we can exile them with cling to dust, however the only suitable noncreature option is Aspect of Lamprey, which is pretty expensive to recur. We can't use Mind rot as that can target us and let us cheaply discard porcuparrot.
Burglar Rat's efficiency (it can even be fetched with kinnan) might be worth it though.
Edit:
Maybe Mausoleum Secrets? I think it lets us cut duskfang mentor for the Aspect of Lamprey. A
nd can replace Revival in the black stage?(Possibly we need to refactor the start as i do use two revivals for that?)
Edit
Nope, can't get Kinnan after a ritual of soot, so it just adds an extra unexileable card, making this worse than the rat unless we can find another way to squeeze it in.
Edit:
So, I'm currently looking at:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Gruul Guildgate
5 Watery Grave
6 Skull Prophet
7 Watery Grave
8 Bolas's Citadel
Engines:
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Leyline of Anticipation
11 Rhythm of the Wild
12 Dance of the Manse
U stage:
13 Maraleaf Pixie
14 Frilled Mystic
15 Shipwreck Dowser
16 Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
17 Quasiduplicate
18 Devious Cover-Up
19 Plummet
20 Ritual of Soot
21 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
22 Duskfang Mentor
23 Porcuparrot
24 Cavern Whisperer
25 Shock
26 Shepherd of the Flock
Red Mana:
27 Electrodominance
28 Nikya of the Old Ways
Card Draw:
29 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
30 Tolarian Kraken
31 Keeper of Fables
32 Response // Resurgence
Opponent Card Draw:
33 Heliod's Intervention
34 Smothering Tithe
35 Happily Ever After
Extras:
36 ???
37 Leyline of Abundance
38 Return to Nature
39 Smothering Tithe
40 Smothering Tithe
41 Smothering Tithe
42 Thousand-Year Storm
43 Thousand-Year Storm
44 Thousand-Year Storm
45 Revival // Revenge
46 Final Payment
47 Drowned Secrets
48 Dazzling Lights
Early life:
49 Cling to Dust
50 Cling to Dust
51 Cling to Dust
9 Persistent Petitioners
With just one slot (#36) left
Double checking that we don't have a good way to spend a single white mana? I don't think we ever want to spend a draw on Shepherd of the Flock. and Final Payment is not particularly efficient either.
(edit, well actually the card we draw isn't particularly important, as we only care about the triggers from Tolarian Kraken, so that implies that Aspect of Lamprey isn't too expensive. Though I'm pretty sure Cavern Whisperer's inefficiency in the life stage doesn't change the estimation. )
Mythos of Snapdax over Final Payment and Return to Nature does still let us cut a card and have an extra white. Though it is 2 more life to cast in the start. I just can't find any cards that are worth the life? Or a way to efficiently use one random extra white. (Gauntlets of Light at least lets us make a batch of red...? or maybe Flicker of Fate?)
Edit: The ozolith lets us cut Duskfang Mentor for an exileable Unexpected Fangs while being exileable itself.this doesn't work due to the stack being empty for combat.Edit: I am now thinking that we can't do better than the 2 life and should just use something that helps out the most (which looks like its repeated reverberation?)
Edit: I think keeping Repeated Reverberation is possibly better than exiling it? Copying a Heliod's Intervention is worth a lot more than drawing a card.
12 slots left now1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Gruul Guildgate
5 Watery Grave
6 Skull Prophet
7 Watery Grave
8 Bolas's Citadel
Engines:
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Dance of the Manse
11 Leyline of Anticipation
12 Rhythm of the Wild
13 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Startup:
14 Drowned Secrets
15 Dazzling Lights
16 Cling to Dust
17 Cling to Dust
18 Cling to Dust
9x Persistent Petitioners
28 ???
29 ???
30 Maraleaf Pixie
31 Frilled Mystic
32 Shipwreck Dowser
33 Quasiduplicate
34 Devious Cover-Up
35 Plummet
Black Mana Stage:
36 Ritual of Soot
37 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
38 Duskfang Mentor
39 Porcuparrot
40 Cavern Whisperer
41 Shock
42 Shepherd of the Flock
Red Mana Layer:
43 Electrodominance
44 Nikya of the Old Ways
45 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
Untap Layer:
46 Tolarian Kraken
47 Keeper of Fables
48 Response // Resurgence
Opponent's life Layer:
49 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
50 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (50):
51 Happily Ever After
Convenient Extras:
52 Leyline of Abundance
53 Smothering Tithe
54 Smothering Tithe
55 Smothering Tithe
56 Thousand-Year Storm
57 Thousand-Year Storm
58 Thousand-Year Storm
Minor optimizations:
59 Repeated Reverberation
60 Return to Nature
Which, if I'm not mistaken, gets us to something like X->X->X->X->50->7?
Edit: the opponent only gets 50 draws, as they drew 7 to start, on their turns 1 and 2, and once in the setup, totaling 10 cards already drawn, leaving 50 left.
Edit: since we can cast Dance of the Manse a second time without penalty, Final payment (29) can be removed, though I think we still want to use that slot to cheaply kill our dorks at the start so another shock? Maybe just bouncing them with Sheperd is enough?
Edot: yeah sheperd is just better than the extra Revival (28), because it costs less life and we can wait until after Dancing for the TYSs and have 4 sets. I think we dont need all of them, so we can save them on the stack for our mutators.
So I hate to show up out of the blue and ruin things but the blue mana stage goes infinite. Quasi + mystic + dowser + pixie + haste + storm goes infinite. So on the stack we target something with the original quasi. Then tys triggers. We use the first of these to target mystic. We then use this new mystic to counter the original quasi and put it into our graveyard. Then our next quasi to resolve will be targeting dowser, which we use to get back quasi into our hand. The rest of the storm amount of quasi’s all target pixie. This gives us plenty of mana to recast quasi to restart this loop
Hopefully this doesn’t mess up the deck structure too badly if parts need to be replaced or removed entirely.
I’m glad these projects are still moving along tho. I haven’t read through everything yet but I did notice this loop.
Hope everyone is doing ok. At some point I will post the last parts of my vintage list I had been working on. I need to sit down and make sure I still remember how everything actually worked before I post any more write ups tho.
Jkibbs
The fact that tokens can't have haste is important in all of the stages.
Looks like I need to read cards better I guess, or possibly read the full thread to see how things actually work. FWIW that is a very cool work around. Glad to see that you guys are still way better at this than me lol. It is still nice to see this have some traction tho. Kind of a nice distraction to get lost in for a bit.
Jkibbs
It is always nice to have more eyes on this as we don't want to miss something like that.
Also any suggestions for the last slots are welcome.
Edit: found an optimization for the start, though it does end with us now at one life:
Bolas's citadel 16
Drowned secrets 14
TYS 8
Kinnan 6 gy:4
Cling to dust 8 gy:3
Dazzling lights 7 gy:9
Cling to Dust 15 gy:6
Cling to Dust 23 gy:3
Smothering tithex4 7
Happily ever after 9
Rhythm of the wild 6
Maraleaf pixie 4 GGGUUWW gy:5
shock 3
revival 1 9G4U2B
Dance of the Manse 3G3U2BW gy:7
This only exiles 7 creatures for life, but does leave us at one life and that seems one short of enough get properly going (by casting Return to safety). we do at least have the storm to exile another, though we are running low on the GY for Dance at that point.
As a bonus, only exiling 7 creatures means we can use the full complement of seven dwarves as the fodder card, which is more elegant.
Edit: aha, we dont need to cast kinnan.
Bolas's citadel 16
Drowned secrets 14
TYS 8 gy:2
Dazzling lights 7 gy:6
Dazzling lights 6 gy:12
Cling to Dust 14 gy:9
Cling to Dust 25 gy:5
Smothering tithex4 9
Happily ever after 11
Rhythm of the wild 8
Maraleaf pixie 6 GGGUWW gy:7
shock 5
revival 3 9G3U2B (revive Kinnan gy:6)
Dance of the Manse 3G2U2BW gy:8 ->3 ish?
Usher to Safety 2
From there we can finish setting up and start to combo. We're down an initial U, and some starting life, but up 2 card draws later.
Also, I noticed this now but since we go to combat, we want to save our treasures so we don't lose the white. This means that we want to recast dance for what me missed (Rhythm, Tithe, Citadel and happily ever after) before we go to combat.
Edit:
Hmm we can also cut Drowned secrets for another dazzle and go:
TYS
Dazzle
Cling
Dazzle
Dazzle
Cling
to save another life and get an extra early storm, though we no longer have free mill and will need to recast dazzle before we can get all of the spells back.
Wilderness Reclamation was recently banned, which is not used in the current list but has been discussed for potential use before. The other bans are unlikely to have any impact on this challenge.
Not sure if it's been pointed out, but I believe the layers based on casting spells (Electrodominance and Heliod's Intervention) are actually worth 2 layers, since casting a Heliod's Intervention triggers X copies of TYS, each of which gains the opponent X life.
(edit: heliod's intervention isn't worth 2 layers, since the opponents life can only be used via combat with an empty stack, but electrodominance is)
As all of the TYS triggers will make the same number of copies of electrodominance, so we only get X^2 castings of shock per RR spend as opposed to just 2 castings of shock without electrodominance.
If thousand-year storm had the "..before it..." line removed then yes it would be worth more layers.
And yeah the Wilderness rec ban seems a bit late, it rotates in like 2 months anyway.
There was a though of using wilderness reclamation to get one late burst of untap triggers, but we'd still want to attack them later, and casting a Resurgence doesn't actually work in the end step.
Any thoughts on what to do with the space we now have? like 4 slots open now.
Edit:Assassin's trophy lets us kill their two lands, 3 slots left.
Medomai's prophecy + courage in crisis looks like it works? we'd get a bunch of card draws for the remaining unique cards. but the next time we cast them we can't get the trigger.
and split cards like Collision // Colossus and Invert//Invent would count as 2 unique names.
Medomai's Prophecy looks good
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Gruul Guildgate
5 Watery Grave
6 Skull Prophet
7 Watery Grave
8 Bolas's Citadel
Engines:
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Dance of the Manse
11 Leyline of Anticipation
12 Rhythm of the Wild
13 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Startup:
14 Dazzling Lights
15 Dazzling Lights
16 Dazzling Lights
17 Cling to Dust
18 Cling to Dust
7x Seven Dwarves
26 Maraleaf Pixie
27 Frilled Mystic
28 Shipwreck Dowser
29 Quasiduplicate
30 Devious Cover-Up
31 Collision // Colossus
Black Mana Stage:
32 Ritual of Soot
33 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
34 Duskfang Mentor
35 Porcuparrot
36 Cavern Whisperer
37 Shock
38 Shepherd of the Flock
Red Mana Layer:
39 Electrodominance
40 Nikya of the Old Ways
41 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
Untap Layer:
42 Tolarian Kraken
Card draw Layer:
43 Keeper of Fables
44 Response // Resurgence
45 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
46 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (x50):
47 Happily Ever After
Convenient Extras:
48 Leyline of Abundance
49 Smothering Tithe
50 Smothering Tithe
51 Smothering Tithe
52 Thousand-Year Storm
53 Thousand-Year Storm
54 Thousand-Year Storm
Minor optimizations:
55 Repeated Reverberation
56 Medomai's prophecy
57 Courage in Crisis
58 Assure // Assemble
59 Flower // Flourish
60 Return to Nature
Every other split card in standard goes infinite. (Invert//Invent lets Dazzling Lights kill things)
and the 61st card would be Assassin's Trophy, but its only +2 card draws.
hmm, with unique names being worth more now, I think Merfolk secretkeeper is better than a dazzling lights, as we can cast the dude later for saga triggers.
Smothering tithes give us extra white which is much more than an extra set of card draws. We'd fill the rest of the deck with them if we could.
Our resources are roughly in this order:
green <<<< blue <<<< black <<<< life << red << draws < opp's life < white < opp's card draws
If we are cutting 2 TYS, this is a good opportunity to slot in Reaper of Night for Harvest fear and let the life stage be slightly more efficient with Migratory Greathorn again.
with the last card actually being another adventure creature. (they have two names while Assassin's trophy only has the one), however there's not really anything else very useful in that set. Lovestruck beast is the cheapest at least.
Edit:
Actually, we dont need Return to nature is just worse than another adventure card, we can Return to safety and then frilled mystic the artifact and enchantments to get them in the yard.
hmm except for the white ones... they can be electrodominance - d!bringing us to:
1 Leyline of Abundance
2 Leyline of Abundance
3 Leyline of Abundance
4 Gruul Guildgate
5 Watery Grave
6 Skull Prophet
7 Watery Grave
8 Bolas's Citadel
Engines:
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Dance of the Manse
11 Leyline of Anticipation
12 Rhythm of the Wild
13 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Startup:
14 Dazzling Lights
15 Dazzling Lights
16 Merfolk Secretkeeper
17 Cling to Dust
18 Cling to Dust
7x Seven Dwarves
26 Maraleaf Pixie
27 Frilled Mystic
28 Shipwreck Dowser
29 Quasiduplicate
30 Devious Cover-Up
31 Collision // Colossus
Black Mana Stage:
32 Ritual of Soot
33 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
34 Duskfang Mentor
35 Porcuparrot
36 Migratory Greathorn
37 Shock
38 Shepherd of the Flock
Red Mana Layer:
39 Electrodominance
40 Nikya of the Old Ways
Untap Layer:
41 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
42 Tolarian Kraken
Card draw Layer:
43 Keeper of Fables
44 Response // Resurgence
45 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
46 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (x50):
47 Happily Ever After
Convenient Extras:
48 Leyline of Abundance
49 Smothering Tithe
50 Smothering Tithe
51 Smothering Tithe
52 Thousand-Year Storm
Minor optimizations:
53 Repeated Reverberation
54 Medomai's prophecy
55 Courage in Crisis
56 Reaper of Night
57 Assure // Assemble
58 Lovestruck Beast
59 Garenbrig Carver
60 Beanstalk Giant
(the mono green adventures are cheaper than a selesnea split card, but Assure lets us exile a few more creatures, and Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi, more than paying for casting Assemble.)
Does anyone see any further optimizations?
I'm basically done with the first draft of the writeup, here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wjjHXZgGTnI0Qu6-L8pSyz9RZ72XL5xj4FszvHr2eaU/edit?usp=sharing
I still need to add card images.
If that's good, we can look for a better way to get this out there than google docs.
Edit: Uh oh, I think I've found an infinite in the deck.
Usher to Safety can bounce Bolas's Citadel, allowing it to be replayed and its activated ability to be used. This allows us to sacrifice the porcuparrot instead of using the shock; saving and thus generating life. It puts a trigger on the stack that will eventually make the opponent lose life, BUT we never actually have to resolve that trigger. Instead, we can continue the combo in response to this trigger, gaining infinite life, and then hitting the opponent with an Electrodominance.
Fortunately, it can be fixed by removing Usher to Safety; as I can't see any other way to reuse the citadel without using higher resources. (quasiduplicating it either makes a legendary noncreature citadel which can't be further quasiduplicated, or, if something was mutated onto it, a creature citadel without haste; it can't be reanimated with dance without white; and it can only be untapped by Kraken at a point where its sacrifice effect doesn't matter).
In order to keep the card draw layer working, then instead of going back to Crash through we can use Light up the stage + Fateful End as the stage spells, with 3 mutators instead of just the one greathorn - which can be unique for Medomai's Prophecy.
However, not having access to Usher does impact the start.
Hmm, that does seem troubling, lets go through your combo line to be sure
Start:
Ping with mutator to gain a life
Bolas's citadel the mutant away
Kinnan them up
Pay the life to Usher to safety the greathorn and the citadel
replay citadel
remutate
Ping with mutator to gain a life
Yeah that does seem to work.
Do the triggers eventually resolving when we go to combat matter? no they don't really, We can get infinite mana and heal them for enough so the citadels don't kill them and then go to combat and kill them.
Good catch.