We don't actually need to give it indestructible because we only get to use it with a few names (<30 or so?) and we don't need to go to combat in between, so we can use the TYS triggers of the second Dance of the manse we get to cast with that odd White we have left.
Flicker of Fate also lets us retrigger Happily ever after, which was the vital reason for enchantment destruction. We do unfortunately lose out on a few draws via Cling to Dust without a way to get the other excess enchantments in the yard.
That said, it looks like fitting a casting of Crushing canopy into the start is possible as we do have a card in hand from HEA...
We could get the last few draws from Cling if we sac the excess enchantments to the citadel in the end step after having resolved all of the gadrack triggers, where we won't have to ever resolve the citadel ability and cost the opponent life.
Edit: Cutting the extra enchantments (and using crushing canopy) still seems worth it as it trades one name (Colossus) for 4.
So a few notes:
Valid names for Medomai's Prophecy after the starting line are numbers: 1,6,11,14,28,29,31(maybe?),34-48,40,51,52,56,57,59,59,60,60. Thirty one?
The cards we can't exile are: Prophet, Citadel, TYS, Pixie, Quasiduplicate, Devious Cover-Up, Crushing canopy, Soot, Revival, Parrot, mutator, mutator, Jaya, Chop down, Light up, Nikya. With everything else being worth exiling eventually.
Do we want Cavern whisperer over Gemrazer to get their cards early at the cost of the life stage being less efficient? I think the answer was no, but want to double check.
Invert goes infinite by allowing a porcuparrot to kill itself without a chop down, but can easily be replaced by another split card. Flower // Flourish looks like the most efficient way to burn excess green mana into storm count.
Ah, yeah missed that, thought invert was safe without Dazzling lights.
For some reason I thought a proliferate creature went infinite, but that's clearly not the case. So thirty two names. (though I'm still not sure on if we can really use Devious Cover-Up and we can't really make full use of the cards in the parrot stage we need to cast most of them in the stage combo.)
But we can't make them discard with bad Deal until the end step, would it be better to get as many of these limited draws earlier when we are doing the full combo? Just as an example consider if we had access to just one gy card and one batch of draws via keeper of fables. Isn't it better to exile the gy card first so we get more keeper of fables?
Edit: Also, since we actually have some black with this start, do we want to use our card in hand cast the initial Ritual of Soot from hand? That'd save 4 life, and maybe a Stonecoil Serpent.
I guess we were accounting for that card to be Crushing canopy, so it only saves 1 life.
Hmm; so the last state is 9G1U10B1W with 8 revivals on the stack and some soots under it (including the real cards) and pixie + crushing canopy in the yard.
Resolve revival: 12G3U10B1W
Kinnan Shipwreck: 6G2U10B1W
Quasiduplicate: 5G10B1W x9 - say something like 4 TYS 3 leyline 2 dowser (quaduplicate, crushing canopy)
Crushing Canopy: 2G10B1W
Resolve Revival: 8G2U10B1W
Repeat until out of revivals: Quasiduplicate, Crushing Canopy, Resolve Revival: lots of G, 2U10B1W; real revival is in yard now
Quasiduplicate to return revival: 10B1W
Resolve Soot
Revival: 2U10B1W
Canopy, resolve revival: 4U10B1W
Kinnan Mystic: 3U10B1W; soot and revival in yard
Now we can do enough of the full black stage to profit enough blue for the next part; DCU has not been needed.
Dance Prophecy
Copy it a bunch
Kinnan proliferate creature
Name DCU on all prophecies, then proliferate and cast DCU.
Don't resolve any triggers yet
Now we can do the full blue and black stages, then when it finally comes to resolve a draw trigger we can get a ton of tolarian krakens first, and set up the life stage from there.
The prophecy gets destroyed but we can then eventually dance it back off of TYS triggers, and use Assure next if we want.
So; we can use DCU as a prophecy name. I don't think it's worth as much as the other names just since the number of prophecies is limited by not having the full blue stage available, but it is worth something.
As for the discard, I'm not sure how to meaningfully compare the impact between using bad deal (thus only discarding very late in the sequence) vs using cavern whisperer (drawing the same number of cards from cling but much earlier in the sequence; though slightly lessening the efficiency of the life stage) vs using harvest fear (which loses a card for cling to exile making it probably the worst option)
Because Revival targets, we only get as many as we have TYS which is just the one until we can Quasiduplicate it.
Still we can name DCU, but not with the full power of the U stage, so its not a lot. Similarly with the life stage cards, we don't get the full power. So its like 25 full three stage combo draws. With six 2 stage draws and a 1 stage batch of draws. And 58+25=83 individual Cling to dust draws, only a few of which can actually be done now.
Do we want to use all the draw triggers of the spells cast before all the stages are set up? We have to in order to get to the dances to get the prophecies back, unless we cast Assure somewhere first.
If so the sequence will be something like
Use black stage for f_{w}(X) prophecies where X is small (about 5-10)
DCU; Use krakens to untap skull prophets for X -> f_{w2+1}(X) [1 layer: 1 draw trigger = X kraken triggers; worth 2 black mana each]
Dance prophecy, copy it a bunch
Gemrazer - X draw triggers - X -> f_{w2+2}(X) [2 layers: 1 draw = X krakens; worth 1 life each [untapping parrot]; 2 life = X black [flicker]]
Jaya - X -> f_{w2+2}(X)
Awaken - X -> f_{w2+3}(X) [3 layers: 1 draw = X krakens; 1 kraken = 2 red [can't yet use Nikya without being able to recur gemrazer after getting rid of nikya]; 1 red = X life [leafkin]; 2 life = X black]
Light up the stage - X -> f_{w2+4}(X) [4 layers: Nikya works now - flicker kills nikya tokens, porcuparrot kills nontoken]
Greathorn - X -> f_{w2+4}(X)
Chop Down - X -> f_{w3+2}(X) [full life stage]
And the rest of the 25 names have a full set of stages and layers under the draws for f_{w3+2} each time.
(Assure could be used next so that the rest of the draws can be saved for whenever we want)
It does mean that we run the black stage before the blue one, but that's actually an improvement from a readability/comprehension standpoint as the blue stage is much more complicated.
Edit: We can save another draw and two(!) card slots by using one of the copies of flicker of fate on the pixie and using the blue to fetch Shipwreck dowser early and return quasiduplicate, then quasisduplicating the dowser for crusing canopy, Ritual of Soot, Dance, and Revival.
Edit: I think your plan doesn't quite work, as we can't kill the Gemrazer if it gets mutated onto Nikya, but if we get a second mutator, we can have the parrot ping it down and then just draw it with a prophecy trigger.
So:
DCU, needed to do the U stage combo.
Gemrazor, needed to ping/gain life
Jaya/Awaken, needed to turn red into life with Leafkin
Greathorn, second mutator for nikya
Chop Down/Light up, Full life stage
We'd like to re-draw the gemrazer between every few untap triggers, rather than only on draw triggers, for the extra layer.
I don't think the extra mutator is required for pinging nikya, as the porcuparrot can be mutated onto something else with red mana.
Thanks for pointing out an optimization in the start:
Rakdos Guildgate+Overgrown Tomb are all the lands we need, saving us 2 life
also found an error with cling to dust math costing us 1 life, so the net is +1 life and +1 card slot. (embereth shieldbreaker? Collision//Colossus goes infinite with Crushing canopy as a second plummet)
Currently I have the start written after we take a double mulligan, as the extra cards really don't matter for a long time.
Since previews have started trickling in, I posted it to reddit.
I'd maybe add a sentence at the end on how to actually direct all that damage at the opponent's face (i.e. sink all excess green mana into a leyline to pump a leafkin). (a few people have asked about that in the reddit thread).
Also it looks like the comments aren't visible in the public version.
Edit: lovestruck beast is slightly more efficient than embreth sheildbreaker
(Crushing Canopy, Embereth Sheildbreaker) -> (Collision // Colossus, Return to nature) looks a little more efficient - same number of names, less mana, and an extra card for cling to dust. But I probably wouldn't bother updating everything just for that now that it's published.
Hi guys again! Wow, incredible job on the writeup, it looks great. Sorry that I've been busy for the past two weeks.
Even though I'm coming here a bit late, I think it should be possible to not waste a Happily Ever After in the beginning. Is Eerie Ultimatum safe? It costs 7 life to cast, and I can't think of anything that we can get that makes up for that. With that, we can get started by putting milling a bunch of cards, and bringing back all the permanents with Eerie Ultimatum.
Oh yes, I know. I was thinking that you were using an initial Happily Ever After to get started, but it looks like the latest version does not. But, in that case, shouldn't the final damage be more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 52 -> 7? We get one for each of the 51 Happily Ever Afters that we can put into play, and one more for Gadrack.
Assuming the current deck does get to 52, we can still improve the start with Eerie Ultimatum putting a lot of cards into play for 7 life, I think.
We do start with an early happily ever after.
We need to animate TYS, so we need to cast Dance of the Manse, so we need white mana from Smothering tithe, which comes from Happily ever after.
so once we've gotten started, they have drawn 7 from their hand, 2 for their turns and 1 from that happily ever after leaving 50 cards left.
But I do see your point, we spend a lot of life in the start. and something like
TYS 10
venture deeper 9
Cling to dust 8->14
Venture deeper 13 gy 12
Eerie Ultimatum x4 returning the tithes, rhythm of the wild, kinnan, pixie, dowser, Happily ever after
6life
seems probably like an improvement.
We do just have four Smothering Tithes for the first Happily Ever After, but that is still more than enough to get well past 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 1 -> 7. Even without the couple of Heliod's Inteventions from that initial white mana, it should be no problem to get past 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 1 -> 7. Then the next 50 Happily Ever Afters increase the 1 to 51, and then Gadrack increases it to 52, so the final lower bound should be 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 52 -> 7.
I might be missing some of the math for chained arrowe, but since we only make 3 treasures to start, and one of them is accounted for to pay for dance of the manse, we only get to like C->3->6? Before casting another Happily ever after.
Flicker of Fate also lets us retrigger Happily ever after, which was the vital reason for enchantment destruction. We do unfortunately lose out on a few draws via Cling to Dust without a way to get the other excess enchantments in the yard.
That said, it looks like fitting a casting of Crushing canopy into the start is possible as we do have a card in hand from HEA...
Edit: oh and new page so here's the list:
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 Merfolk Secretkeeper
15 Cling to Dust
16 Cling to Dust
17 Cling to Dust
4x Stonecoil Serpent
4x Ugin's Conjurant
26 Flicker of Fate
27 Maraleaf Pixie
28 Frilled Mystic
29 Shipwreck Dowser
30 Quasiduplicate
31 Devious Cover-Up
32 Collision // Colossus
Black Mana Stage:
33 Ritual of Soot
34 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
35 Duskfang Mentor
36 Porcuparrot
37 Migratory Greathorn
38 Gemrazer
39 Jaya, Venerated Firemage
40 Giant Killer
41 Light up the Stage
Red Mana Layer:
42 Leafkin Avenger
43 Nikya of the Old Ways
Untap Layer:
44 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
45 Tolarian Kraken
46 Keeper of Fables
47 Response // Resurgence
Opponent's life Layer:
48 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
49 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (x50):
50 Happily Ever After
End step:
51 Gadrack, the Crown Scourge
52 Bad Deal
Convenient Extras:
53 Leyline of Abundance
54 Smothering Tithe
55 Smothering Tithe
56 Smothering Tithe
57 Thousand-Year Storm
Minor optimizations:
58 Repeated Reverberation
59 Medomai's prophecy
60 Courage in Crisis
I also almost had an extra layer with Teferi's Ageless Insight but that decks us, so we can avoid dying with Underrealm Lich but that no longer triggers Tolarian Kraken
We could get the last few draws from Cling if we sac the excess enchantments to the citadel in the end step after having resolved all of the gadrack triggers, where we won't have to ever resolve the citadel ability and cost the opponent life.
Edit: Cutting the extra enchantments (and using crushing canopy) still seems worth it as it trades one name (Colossus) for 4.
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 Merfolk Secretkeeper
15 Cling to Dust
16 Cling to Dust
17 Cling to Dust
4x Stonecoil Serpent
4x Ugin's Conjurant
26 Flicker of Fate
27 Maraleaf Pixie
28 Frilled Mystic
29 Shipwreck Dowser
30 Quasiduplicate
31 Devious Cover-Up
32 Crushing Canopy
Black Mana Stage:
33 Ritual of Soot
34 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
35 Duskfang Mentor
36 Porcuparrot
37 Migratory Greathorn
38 Gemrazer
39 Jaya, Venerated Firemage
40 Giant Killer
41 Light up the Stage
Red Mana Layer:
42 Leafkin Avenger
43 Nikya of the Old Ways
Untap Layer:
44 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
45 Tolarian Kraken
46 Keeper of Fables
47 Response // Resurgence
Opponent's life Layer:
48 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
49 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (x50):
50 Happily Ever After
End step:
51 Gadrack, the Crown-Scourge
52 Bad Deal
Convenient Extras:
53 Smothering Tithe
54 Smothering Tithe
55 Smothering Tithe
Minor optimizations:
56 Repeated Reverberation
57 Medomai's prophecy
58 Courage in Crisis
59 Assure // Assemble
60 Invert // Invent
So a few notes:
Valid names for Medomai's Prophecy after the starting line are numbers: 1,6,11,14,28,29,31(maybe?),34-48,40,51,52,56,57,59,59,60,60. Thirty one?
The cards we can't exile are: Prophet, Citadel, TYS, Pixie, Quasiduplicate, Devious Cover-Up, Crushing canopy, Soot, Revival, Parrot, mutator, mutator, Jaya, Chop down, Light up, Nikya. With everything else being worth exiling eventually.
Do we want Cavern whisperer over Gemrazer to get their cards early at the cost of the life stage being less efficient? I think the answer was no, but want to double check.
We could replace Courage in Crisis for a creature that proliferates such as Pollenbright Druid to get an extra name for prophecy.
Invert goes infinite by allowing a porcuparrot to kill itself without a chop down, but can easily be replaced by another split card. Flower // Flourish looks like the most efficient way to burn excess green mana into storm count.
For some reason I thought a proliferate creature went infinite, but that's clearly not the case. So thirty two names. (though I'm still not sure on if we can really use Devious Cover-Up and we can't really make full use of the cards in the parrot stage we need to cast most of them in the stage combo.)
But we can't make them discard with bad Deal until the end step, would it be better to get as many of these limited draws earlier when we are doing the full combo? Just as an example consider if we had access to just one gy card and one batch of draws via keeper of fables. Isn't it better to exile the gy card first so we get more keeper of fables?
Edit: Also, since we actually have some black with this start, do we want to use our card in hand cast the initial Ritual of Soot from hand? That'd save 4 life, and maybe a Stonecoil Serpent.
I guess we were accounting for that card to be Crushing canopy, so it only saves 1 life.
Resolve revival: 12G3U10B1W
Kinnan Shipwreck: 6G2U10B1W
Quasiduplicate: 5G10B1W x9 - say something like 4 TYS 3 leyline 2 dowser (quaduplicate, crushing canopy)
Crushing Canopy: 2G10B1W
Resolve Revival: 8G2U10B1W
Repeat until out of revivals: Quasiduplicate, Crushing Canopy, Resolve Revival: lots of G, 2U10B1W; real revival is in yard now
Quasiduplicate to return revival: 10B1W
Resolve Soot
Revival: 2U10B1W
Canopy, resolve revival: 4U10B1W
Kinnan Mystic: 3U10B1W; soot and revival in yard
Now we can do enough of the full black stage to profit enough blue for the next part; DCU has not been needed.
Dance Prophecy
Copy it a bunch
Kinnan proliferate creature
Name DCU on all prophecies, then proliferate and cast DCU.
Don't resolve any triggers yet
Now we can do the full blue and black stages, then when it finally comes to resolve a draw trigger we can get a ton of tolarian krakens first, and set up the life stage from there.
The prophecy gets destroyed but we can then eventually dance it back off of TYS triggers, and use Assure next if we want.
So; we can use DCU as a prophecy name. I don't think it's worth as much as the other names just since the number of prophecies is limited by not having the full blue stage available, but it is worth something.
As for the discard, I'm not sure how to meaningfully compare the impact between using bad deal (thus only discarding very late in the sequence) vs using cavern whisperer (drawing the same number of cards from cling but much earlier in the sequence; though slightly lessening the efficiency of the life stage) vs using harvest fear (which loses a card for cling to exile making it probably the worst option)
Still we can name DCU, but not with the full power of the U stage, so its not a lot. Similarly with the life stage cards, we don't get the full power. So its like 25 full three stage combo draws. With six 2 stage draws and a 1 stage batch of draws. And 58+25=83 individual Cling to dust draws, only a few of which can actually be done now.
If so the sequence will be something like
Use black stage for f_{w}(X) prophecies where X is small (about 5-10)
DCU; Use krakens to untap skull prophets for X -> f_{w2+1}(X) [1 layer: 1 draw trigger = X kraken triggers; worth 2 black mana each]
Dance prophecy, copy it a bunch
Gemrazer - X draw triggers - X -> f_{w2+2}(X) [2 layers: 1 draw = X krakens; worth 1 life each [untapping parrot]; 2 life = X black [flicker]]
Jaya - X -> f_{w2+2}(X)
Awaken - X -> f_{w2+3}(X) [3 layers: 1 draw = X krakens; 1 kraken = 2 red [can't yet use Nikya without being able to recur gemrazer after getting rid of nikya]; 1 red = X life [leafkin]; 2 life = X black]
Light up the stage - X -> f_{w2+4}(X) [4 layers: Nikya works now - flicker kills nikya tokens, porcuparrot kills nontoken]
Greathorn - X -> f_{w2+4}(X)
Chop Down - X -> f_{w3+2}(X) [full life stage]
And the rest of the 25 names have a full set of stages and layers under the draws for f_{w3+2} each time.
(Assure could be used next so that the rest of the draws can be saved for whenever we want)
It does mean that we run the black stage before the blue one, but that's actually an improvement from a readability/comprehension standpoint as the blue stage is much more complicated.
Edit: We can save another draw and two(!) card slots by using one of the copies of flicker of fate on the pixie and using the blue to fetch Shipwreck dowser early and return quasiduplicate, then quasisduplicating the dowser for crusing canopy, Ritual of Soot, Dance, and Revival.
Happily ever after (at least 10 life)
Rhythm
Kinnan
Pixie 3G2U
Flicker (x5) 18G4U8B
Kinnan shipwereck dowser 12G3U8B
Quasiduplicate (x6) 11G1U8B Crushing canopy, Dance, Ritual, Revival, and Quasiduplicate (DCU?)
Crushing canopy 8G1U8B
Dance 2G8B
Ritual of soot (1/7) 6B
Revival (x1) 6G2U6B
Quasiduplicate
Ritual of soot (2/7)
Revival (x5 ish)
...
Ooh, and we can even start with one fewer cling to dust:
TYS
Heart's desire (Lovestruck beast)
Clingx2
Venture deeper
Cling x4
EDIT:
Man I cant believe I missed this: Flicker of fate targets, so it only makes 6G2U2B per TYS,
ok so reworked the start and I have:
8 x mana x/xs
TYS 10
Cling 9->12
Venture 11
Cling 10->19
Cling 19->31
Smothering Tithe x4 15
Happily Ever After 12->17
Rhythm 14
Kinnan 12 2W
Pixie 10 3G2U2W
Leafkin avenger 6 8G2U2W
Kinnan dowser (canopy) 6 2G1U2W
Flicker (Quasiduplicate)4 13G3U2B2W
Canopy (hand) 4 10G3U2B2W
Dance (hand) 4 4G2U2B1W
Quasiduplicate (hand) 4 3G0U2B
Ritual of soot (hand) 4 1G
Revival 2
Edit:
Which means the deck is:
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 Merfolk Secretkeeper
15 Cling to Dust
16 Cling to Dust
17 Cling to Dust
4x Stonecoil Serpent
4x Ugin's Conjurant
26 Flicker of Fate
27 Maraleaf Pixie
28 Frilled Mystic
29 Shipwreck Dowser
30 Quasiduplicate
31 Devious Cover-Up
32 Crushing Canopy
Black Mana Stage:
33 Ritual of Soot
34 Revival // Revenge
Life Stage:
35 Duskfang Mentor
36 Porcuparrot
37 Migratory Greathorn
38 Gemrazer
39 Jaya, Venerated Firemage
40 Giant Killer
41 Light up the Stage
Red Mana Layer:
42 Leafkin Avenger
43 Nikya of the Old Ways
Untap Layer:
44 Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi
45 Tolarian Kraken
46 Keeper of Fables
47 Response // Resurgence
Opponent's life Layer:
48 Heliod's Intervention
White mana Layer:
49 Smothering Tithe
Opponent's draws (x50):
50 Happily Ever After
End step:
51 Gadrack, the Crown-Scourge
52 Bad Deal
Convenient Extras:
53 Smothering Tithe
54 Smothering Tithe
55 Smothering Tithe
Minor optimizations:
56 Repeated Reverberation
57 Medomai's prophecy
58 Pollenbright Druid
59 Assure // Assemble
60 Flower // Flourish
Edit: I think your plan doesn't quite work, as we can't kill the Gemrazer if it gets mutated onto Nikya, but if we get a second mutator, we can have the parrot ping it down and then just draw it with a prophecy trigger.
So:
DCU, needed to do the U stage combo.
Gemrazor, needed to ping/gain life
Jaya/Awaken, needed to turn red into life with Leafkin
Greathorn, second mutator for nikya
Chop Down/Light up, Full life stage
I don't think the extra mutator is required for pinging nikya, as the porcuparrot can be mutated onto something else with red mana.
Edit: Second draft of the writeup is more or less done
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wjjHXZgGTnI0Qu6-L8pSyz9RZ72XL5xj4FszvHr2eaU/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for pointing out an optimization in the start:
Rakdos Guildgate+Overgrown Tomb are all the lands we need, saving us 2 life
also found an error with cling to dust math costing us 1 life, so the net is +1 life and +1 card slot. (embereth shieldbreaker? Collision//Colossus goes infinite with Crushing canopy as a second plummet)
Currently I have the start written after we take a double mulligan, as the extra cards really don't matter for a long time.
Since previews have started trickling in, I posted it to reddit.
I'd maybe add a sentence at the end on how to actually direct all that damage at the opponent's face (i.e. sink all excess green mana into a leyline to pump a leafkin). (a few people have asked about that in the reddit thread).
Also it looks like the comments aren't visible in the public version.
Edit: lovestruck beast is slightly more efficient than embreth sheildbreaker
And I though I had tested comments.
(Crushing Canopy, Embereth Sheildbreaker) -> (Collision // Colossus, Return to nature) looks a little more efficient - same number of names, less mana, and an extra card for cling to dust. But I probably wouldn't bother updating everything just for that now that it's published.
Even though I'm coming here a bit late, I think it should be possible to not waste a Happily Ever After in the beginning. Is Eerie Ultimatum safe? It costs 7 life to cast, and I can't think of anything that we can get that makes up for that. With that, we can get started by putting milling a bunch of cards, and bringing back all the permanents with Eerie Ultimatum.
Assuming the current deck does get to 52, we can still improve the start with Eerie Ultimatum putting a lot of cards into play for 7 life, I think.
We need to animate TYS, so we need to cast Dance of the Manse, so we need white mana from Smothering tithe, which comes from Happily ever after.
so once we've gotten started, they have drawn 7 from their hand, 2 for their turns and 1 from that happily ever after leaving 50 cards left.
But I do see your point, we spend a lot of life in the start. and something like
TYS 10
venture deeper 9
Cling to dust 8->14
Venture deeper 13 gy 12
Eerie Ultimatum x4 returning the tithes, rhythm of the wild, kinnan, pixie, dowser, Happily ever after
6life
seems probably like an improvement.
Also the improved start adds some card slot freedom, so adventure guys?