Yeah, the non-trickery stage should not have any problem going off by turn 5 (as mordenkainen is expensive enough to be safe there), and the trickery version should be able to equal that, but can maybe still go off turn 4? but I haven't found a way. Chandra, Heart of fire is not safe if we are using the bloodsky massacre due to the +1 being a cheap way to draw cards.
(other 'top' mana engines are: circle of dreams druid+haste, which scales up quickly but does use up green and haste vs animated Forsaken monument+crawling barrens which does not need haste and only makes colorless but needs a way to animate artifacts and quite lot of startup mana before it is profitable.)
I'm really not sure which way we should go, its looking like a two turn difference between the stage and the layers, and while I do like stages, I also like the low turn count.
The rules as written would champion the turn two (6+5)*2=22 damage line.
"-In the old challenge, you had to go off on turn one. Here, that rule is relaxed, with a caveat: the fewer turns required, the better. No one is impressed that you can deal a lot of damage on turn 50, or 50 million for that matter."
But I think we can agree that is less interesting (can't even have much fun with it using like trickery -> Colossification as it taps the gobbo, monstrous step gets a whopping 2 more damage through though)
I am leaning towards turn 5 stage over turn 3 layers, but I can see both sides here.
Yeah, I think I would lean towards turn 5 stage over turn 3 layers as well.
But, the Jasper/Magda start can generate mana too cheaply, unless we avoid getting haste. For that, we would need to replace Scaled Herbalist, and also we can't attack with Planar Ally or similar unless we can have some restricted form of haste.
Edit: Damn, getting a fast start looks hard, it seems like any form of draw or fetch can mess with the stage.
Hmmm, maybe. If we could get three Tibalt's Trickery by turn 3, we could mill 9 cards, plus 2 with Eye Collector. We need another mana on turn 3 though.
For the non-Trickery version, could Mordenkainen be safe again? That could be the turn 4 drop. (We would have to replace Vorinclex with a 5-drop though.)
In both cases of course, we still need the mana to put all the cards we get into play.
Yeah Mordenkainen is safe without trickery. though without Vorinclex in play yet we'd have to +5 somehow to ult.
Maybe Elspeth conquers Death on turn 3, put in vorinclex on upkeep of T4 via In Search of Greatness, then reanimate morden? (get the last two chapters after our draw step.)
Though getting In search of Greatness and Elspeth Conquers death in play on turn 3 seems like it might not be possible... Without help from Gilded goose, but that doesn't seem like it's worth it.
I think I'd prefer a turn 5 stage with few layers over turn 6 with more, but I'm not sure...
As for minimum starting mana, its still kind of a lot:
We need to animate Reflections of littjara, so it can be copied in the stage, so that's 6UW for Dance of the manse forced in all versions
We need Vadrok in play or mutated ,m utating is probably cheaper at 1URR vs RUW
We need some Thaumabrooms if we are using bloodsky massacre, we lose mana on the first few, so at least 9 more mana there. (Dancing another one would help too)
The Crawling Barrens version needs 4 mana to even get started, and isn't profitable until the 3rd copy of forsaken monument, so at least 13 mana that way,
We don't need many copies of Reflections/sea gate storm caller to start seeing stage effects, only a couple of each of them, which can be wrapped into the Dance.
Then actually starting the stage needs another like 10UU mana, depending what version it is.
so In total I estimate needing at least 26RRUUUW Not sure on how many cards we need.
Hmmm, 32 mana is a lot - it feels like that will take 3 turns probably? I agree with a turn 5 stage over turn 3 layers, but if it takes until turn 7 or 8, I think I lean the other way. How do we go about getting all that mana / putting all those permanents into play?
Well, without considering later layers, taking my other line:
t1: forest Jaspera sentinel hand:5
t2: mountain magda, brazen outlaw, In search of greatness hand:3
t3: Circle of dreams druid for free, nyx lotus hand:2
t4: free Jegantha, the wellspring, Vorinclex, Mordenkainen with GGGGG floating
ult morden, draw library, lotus cobra, lotus cobra, island, faeburrow elder.
T5upkeep:tap lands for quandrix command to reshuffle morden to avoid decking, get a free 7 drop, but they aren't very exciting
swamp tap jegantha for wubrg, Seasoned hallowblade, mutate bat on vorinclex, thaumaturge Faeburrow elder taps for WUBRG now. discard enchantments+broom Dance of the manse, making a thaumabroom, sac the magda treasure, 2 thaumabrooms.
fairly close to going off there, but running low on mana now.
I'm worried about Jaspera/Magda/Faeburrow Elder getting us cheap mana, but I guess if we can get a stage going without haste, those wouldn't be a problem.
Hmm yeah, perhaps that Chandra could work with the mutate/kicker stage we currently have? We have to worry about the possibility of casting a kicked Into the Roil and then drawing and casting casting cards we need for free, but it might work out.
Hmm, one issue I'm seeing is that an unkicked Into the roil can bounce chandra and replay her to draw cards too cheaply; so we'd need to not have vorinclex; in which case chandra can ult on turn 5 at the earliest (perhaps a turn earlier with the help of Kasmina, Enigma sage); and also sagas don't work (including The Bloodsky Masacre)
I think the Forsaken monument/Crawling barrens mana engine is a bit more competitive with the saga than I thought, The sagas die after chapter 3 and we lose the thaumaturge, but we can turn tapped crawling barrens into more forsaken monuments every constellation trigger. (though the lifegain trigger isn't optimal)
cutting vorinclex isnt too bad, we can still do something like:
red/white tapped land
island, trickery into chandra +1 to 6
forest, kasmina, chandra +2 to 8
chandra ult on turn 4
Chandra means we are forced into the trickery version, as it only costs U to kick the into the roil that way.
Edit:
Now this does still need a good chunk of mana to go off: 6UW for dance of the manse, and like 10+ for crawling barrens/thaumabroom.
we can get the white and blue from our lands, so there's land drop + G left, and still have 10 cards in hand. (And 3 milled)
I'm not sure if that's enough to go off...
Going Monument, Strixhaven stadiumx4 gives us 8 mana, but takes 5 of the cards in hand,,,
I guess Ugin is safe without vorinclex?
Though ugin's ult is kind of worse than omniscience.
Hmm, since chandra makes us discard, we have 7 cards in hand and 7 in grave (+ trickery/crypt)
Possibly:
Have the forest be GU snarl instead
Thaumaturge, monument, 3 stadium, dance - 2 left in hand
get back reflections, monument, broom, stadium
last 2 cards = vadrok, octopus
mutate octopus, copy it; trickery octopus into eerie ultimatum? perhaps one of the dance targets is King narfi's Betrayal for extra mill?
except ultimatum can put lands into play later breaking the stage...
Then we need to take care of mana - I'm thinking Azusa, Lost but Seeking could help? We could possibly mutate it and get more copies via the Thaumabroom combo.
I don't think harness infinity is safe if we aren't forced to resolve the original and exile it - which we're not, as after chandra alt we have access to stormcaller + teach + harness; resolve the copy and trickery the original.
Secret Rendezvous can get cast by Vadrok though so we can get the rest of the cards that way.
I don't think we need Azuza if we are already using Scaled Herbalist+haste? There's not really another way to make the stage mana.
Hmm, without a red/green/white tapped land (no naya triome) we need an untapped land of one of those colors to be able to cast trickery/kasmina/dance on turns 2,3,4 so one of those colors will be cheap thanks to the stage replaying lands.
Well we want Redcap Melee to sacrifice the island anyway so Flumph wouldn't require thaat much more setup, but we'd still probably want some Secret Rendezvous to get started.
So we have
T1 RW tapland hand:6
T2 island, crypt, trickery->chandra, uptick to 6; hand 4 grave 3 (+trickery,crypt)
T3 forest, kasmina, uptick to 8; hand 3
T4 ult chandra; hand 7 grave 7; mana avail = UWG+land drop
monument, barrens, stadium*2, dance (for insight, monument, reflections, 3 unspecified) - hand 2 grave 1 mana G
rendevous - hand 7 grave 1 mana G
from there we probably need a few blue mana to fully set up all the engines; i.e. mutating onto monument and insight, and mutating onto vadrok a few times to cast the spells needed
Omen of the dead might be a useful way to trigger thaumabrooms and get some extra value from the grave.
I thought about First day of class for haste, but learn along with insight allows for discard 1 to draw 2. So we can use either Claim the firstborn (might require too much early resources) or something like Tuktuk Rubblefort/Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
And if we are doing haste (we need scaled herbalist to have it at least) and have basic forest anyway, the stage can be + green so we can use Circle of dreams druid instead of monument+barrens
so going:
turn 3: Kasmina -1 (make a 1/1 fractal)
turn 4: ult chandra, Kasmina -1, rubblefort, druid, two other creatures (thaumaturge + vadrok? (flumph??)) tap druid for dance
Rendezvous
we can get some blue recycling and redrawing the island:
sac it to Redcap melee
reshuffle it with quandrix command
draw with flumph trigger
play with scaled herbalist.
tap for +U
which we can loop easily with 4x of the spells, but we can probably do even better with trickery+sea gate stormcaller tricksy stack shenanigans.
Edit: so super unoptimized line could be:
chandra ult: 7 cards GUW floating grave 7
rubblefort, druid, thaumaturge, flumph, flumph tap druid for 7g 2 cards 8gUW floating
Dance x=7 broom, reflectionsx4 (wizard?), mirrormade (blank?), terferi's ageless insight, thaumaturge becomes a druid taps, then a broom. 15g floating thundering sparkmage (+4x from reflections), resolve a damage trigger for flumphs
can redraw the island with redcap melee+quandrix command, (this is why I put in the second flumph)
then draw trickery+island, trickery the real sparkmage, into scaled herbalist, which can then tap to put in the island
Next draw trigger can get sea dasher to delegendify the ageless insight and allow us to copy it with thaumabroom.
after we have a second teferi's ageless insights we can use each flumph trigger to draw
island, command, redcap melee, flumph
allowing us to get a U for each of the ~50 cards left in the opponent's deck.
Edit: probably want to also make thaumabroom progress in the meantime with like Omen of the Hunt, so draws would be like:
island, Q command, redcap melee, flumph, Q command, Q command, Omen of the Hunt, X
By the time we octopus the insight, we want to have a reflections on octopus so that we can counter the original in order to not have it stuck on the insight. It seems tricky to thaumabroom one by that point, so we instead probably want one of the original reflections to name octopus.
We also may want to bring back a tormod's crypt with the dance in order to have sacrifices on demand; to get maximum value out of every omen beyond maybe the first.
Omen also sacrifices on demand, but yes crypt is cheaper so that's probably a good idea and we have an extra mana which we'd get back instantly.
We don't need all 4 on wizard, sure, but my thought was that we'd just bounce the octopus back to hand with unkicked into the roil when we want to go off, that way we don't need to draw it.
Managing the thaumabrooms is a bit tricky as they have to ETB as reflections of littjara to be able to choose a creature type, I don't think its a huge problem but definitely not as simple as just swap everything over.
Ah yes using a roil on the nontoken octopus/insight also works since we don't need the creature insight around forever. (and even if we wanted more copies later, the existing copies of insight are still creatures).
The different operations that can be performed on thaumabrooms, from the starting state of "most of them are brooms", is:
- to double the number of brooms, if we have enough mana, simply sac something.
- to copy something that doesn't need an ETB, simply play an enchantment. Another can be played later to turn them back to brooms. (Can copy a few crypts for easy sacrifices later, or a few druids for plenty of mana for those sacs)
- to copy something that does need an ETB, we sac something, then in response to the broom triggers, play an enchantment. Make some brooms into the thing we need ETB copies of, then resolve the sac triggers. The last can be any random enchantment to turn them back into brooms.
Wait, crap. I think this setup goes infinite:
- Starting with X thaumabrooms, and a crypt, and an enchantment in hand
- Sac the crypt; in response play the enchantment. Make most of the brooms into druids, a few into crypts, and a few into random enchantments.
- Resolve the sac triggers; spending 3X mana to make X druids (so X^2 mana), at least 1 crypt, and at least 2 enchantments
- First enchantment turns them all into brooms
- In response to the second enchantment about to enter, sac the crypt, and do it again.
So we need to use Stonecoil serpent rather than crypt; and omen also doesn't work for the same reason (it can be danced into a creature).
So we need a different flash enchantment (there are a few auras, also Ashiok's erasure); and we can't have creatures, artifacts, or enchantments that sac themselves or other permanents. Fortunately it looks like treasures are still OK as they can't be creatures and thus can't be copied by thaumabrooms. Can we get by with just the sac off of Redcap Melee?
Edit: We can also use a Fabled passage that the herbalist can put into play for a sac that we have more control over the timing of.
Edit: As for layers, post #72 almost works with the addition of using Beledros Witherbloom to convert life into mana; except that deedlit's layers there invole white mana but we're assuming that we have a white-producing land for dance.
Perhaps for the white mana we could instead use one of our combat steps to attack with an Old Gnawbone. We can also get one additional layer in that each instance of making a treasure makes lots through Xorn; and then each treasure taps for lots through Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.
Edit: We'd also need to ensure it's not possible to go off if witherbloom comes out before turn 4; as otherwise we'll have pests that can be copied with brooms and gain too much life. I'm pretty sure it's not possible to get witherbloom out before turn 4 *and* ult chandra on turn 4; but I'm not sure whether it is possible to go off with an early witherbloom *without* the chandra ult.
Edit: Plenty of "pay life to draw cards" effects can help turn life into draw (and hence blue) more safely than witherbloom; in particular Peer into the abyss probably eliminates the need for flumph, rendevous, and insight; and doesn't require using a combat step for the white.
Edit: CRAP; the stage doesn't work:
Start with UUU
Thaumabroom some stormcallers and herbalists
Mutate (UU), cast kicked roil (U).
Get several roil copies; the copies also count as kicked.
With each group of 3, draw redcap, qcommand, island; netting U.
Trying to think whether having only one qcommand (and only one of other important cards) can salvage it.
Edit: I think having only one qcommand *and* no teach by example salvages it. That way, qcommand can't be copied and thus only one of it may exist - it can't, say, be copied and have the original countered, having the copy target the original. Then, once qcommand is in the graveyard, it may only be cast via vadrok. Thus, the island can't be reshuffled multiple times from one batch of roil copies, without spending the blue for mutate again.
Chandra, Heart of fire is not safe if we are using the bloodsky massacre due to the +1 being a cheap way to draw cards.
(other 'top' mana engines are: circle of dreams druid+haste, which scales up quickly but does use up green and haste vs animated Forsaken monument+crawling barrens which does not need haste and only makes colorless but needs a way to animate artifacts and quite lot of startup mana before it is profitable.)
I'm really not sure which way we should go, its looking like a two turn difference between the stage and the layers, and while I do like stages, I also like the low turn count.
The rules as written would champion the turn two (6+5)*2=22 damage line. But I think we can agree that is less interesting (can't even have much fun with it using like trickery -> Colossification as it taps the gobbo, monstrous step gets a whopping 2 more damage through though)
I am leaning towards turn 5 stage over turn 3 layers, but I can see both sides here.
But, the Jasper/Magda start can generate mana too cheaply, unless we avoid getting haste. For that, we would need to replace Scaled Herbalist, and also we can't attack with Planar Ally or similar unless we can have some restricted form of haste.
Edit: Damn, getting a fast start looks hard, it seems like any form of draw or fetch can mess with the stage.
Here's a different take on a kinda minimal but still pretty quick non trickery start:
G/B snarl Eye Collector
forest In search of greatness mill vorinclex
Grinning Ignus, Mountain, Unbreakable Bond-> Vorinclex
some 7 drop?
Could we do something like trickery into Harness Infinity after milling a bunch?
For the non-Trickery version, could Mordenkainen be safe again? That could be the turn 4 drop. (We would have to replace Vorinclex with a 5-drop though.)
In both cases of course, we still need the mana to put all the cards we get into play.
Maybe Elspeth conquers Death on turn 3, put in vorinclex on upkeep of T4 via In Search of Greatness, then reanimate morden? (get the last two chapters after our draw step.)
Though getting In search of Greatness and Elspeth Conquers death in play on turn 3 seems like it might not be possible... Without help from Gilded goose, but that doesn't seem like it's worth it.
I think I'd prefer a turn 5 stage with few layers over turn 6 with more, but I'm not sure...
As for minimum starting mana, its still kind of a lot:
We need to animate Reflections of littjara, so it can be copied in the stage, so that's 6UW for Dance of the manse forced in all versions
We need Vadrok in play or mutated ,m utating is probably cheaper at 1URR vs RUW
We need some Thaumabrooms if we are using bloodsky massacre, we lose mana on the first few, so at least 9 more mana there. (Dancing another one would help too)
The Crawling Barrens version needs 4 mana to even get started, and isn't profitable until the 3rd copy of forsaken monument, so at least 13 mana that way,
We don't need many copies of Reflections/sea gate storm caller to start seeing stage effects, only a couple of each of them, which can be wrapped into the Dance.
Then actually starting the stage needs another like 10UU mana, depending what version it is.
so In total I estimate needing at least 26RRUUUW Not sure on how many cards we need.
Well, without considering later layers, taking my other line:
t1: forest Jaspera sentinel hand:5
t2: mountain magda, brazen outlaw, In search of greatness hand:3
t3: Circle of dreams druid for free, nyx lotus hand:2
t4: free Jegantha, the wellspring, Vorinclex, Mordenkainen with GGGGG floating
ult morden, draw library, lotus cobra, lotus cobra, island, faeburrow elder.
T5upkeep:tap lands for quandrix command to reshuffle morden to avoid decking, get a free 7 drop, but they aren't very exciting
swamp tap jegantha for wubrg, Seasoned hallowblade, mutate bat on vorinclex, thaumaturge Faeburrow elder taps for WUBRG now. discard enchantments+broom Dance of the manse, making a thaumabroom, sac the magda treasure, 2 thaumabrooms.
fairly close to going off there, but running low on mana now.
(although, it doesn't change mutate or kicker costs)
cutting vorinclex isnt too bad, we can still do something like:
red/white tapped land
island, trickery into chandra +1 to 6
forest, kasmina, chandra +2 to 8
chandra ult on turn 4
Chandra means we are forced into the trickery version, as it only costs U to kick the into the roil that way.
Edit:
Now this does still need a good chunk of mana to go off: 6UW for dance of the manse, and like 10+ for crawling barrens/thaumabroom.
we can get the white and blue from our lands, so there's land drop + G left, and still have 10 cards in hand. (And 3 milled)
I'm not sure if that's enough to go off...
Going Monument, Strixhaven stadiumx4 gives us 8 mana, but takes 5 of the cards in hand,,,
I guess Ugin is safe without vorinclex?
Though ugin's ult is kind of worse than omniscience.
Possibly:
Have the forest be GU snarl instead
Thaumaturge, monument, 3 stadium, dance - 2 left in hand
get back reflections, monument, broom, stadium
last 2 cards = vadrok, octopus
mutate octopus, copy it; trickery octopus into eerie ultimatum? perhaps one of the dance targets is King narfi's Betrayal for extra mill?
except ultimatum can put lands into play later breaking the stage...
Tryig to find a usable card draw spell has been a bit of a crushing disappointment, as I don't think Liliana's Standard Bearer is safe. As awful of a card as it normally is I guess our best option is Secret Rendezvous?
We can chain 4x Gyruda, doom of depths for mill.
Then we need to take care of mana - I'm thinking Azusa, Lost but Seeking could help? We could possibly mutate it and get more copies via the Thaumabroom combo.
Secret rendezvous seems useful - perhaps we can use Teferi's Ageless Insight to get more cards out of each of our limited uses of it.
We'd need to be careful not to allow our opponent to discard cards, as otherwise we'd be able to refill their library with Quandrix command
Edit: Flumph is an alternative to rendezvous that we can get more uses out of
Secret Rendezvous can get cast by Vadrok though so we can get the rest of the cards that way.
I don't think we need Azuza if we are already using Scaled Herbalist+haste? There's not really another way to make the stage mana.
Hmm, without a red/green/white tapped land (no naya triome) we need an untapped land of one of those colors to be able to cast trickery/kasmina/dance on turns 2,3,4 so one of those colors will be cheap thanks to the stage replaying lands.
As for mana, if one of those is going to be cheap anyway, we can moot either red or green for Birgi, god of storytelling or Circle of dreams druid.
T1 RW tapland hand:6
T2 island, crypt, trickery->chandra, uptick to 6; hand 4 grave 3 (+trickery,crypt)
T3 forest, kasmina, uptick to 8; hand 3
T4 ult chandra; hand 7 grave 7; mana avail = UWG+land drop
monument, barrens, stadium*2, dance (for insight, monument, reflections, 3 unspecified) - hand 2 grave 1 mana G
rendevous - hand 7 grave 1 mana G
from there we probably need a few blue mana to fully set up all the engines; i.e. mutating onto monument and insight, and mutating onto vadrok a few times to cast the spells needed
Omen of the dead might be a useful way to trigger thaumabrooms and get some extra value from the grave.
I thought about First day of class for haste, but learn along with insight allows for discard 1 to draw 2. So we can use either Claim the firstborn (might require too much early resources) or something like Tuktuk Rubblefort/Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
And if we are doing haste (we need scaled herbalist to have it at least) and have basic forest anyway, the stage can be + green so we can use Circle of dreams druid instead of monument+barrens
so going:
turn 3: Kasmina -1 (make a 1/1 fractal)
turn 4: ult chandra, Kasmina -1, rubblefort, druid, two other creatures (thaumaturge + vadrok? (flumph??)) tap druid for dance
Rendezvous
we can get some blue recycling and redrawing the island:
sac it to Redcap melee
reshuffle it with quandrix command
draw with flumph trigger
play with scaled herbalist.
tap for +U
which we can loop easily with 4x of the spells, but we can probably do even better with trickery+sea gate stormcaller tricksy stack shenanigans.
Edit: so super unoptimized line could be:
chandra ult: 7 cards GUW floating grave 7
rubblefort, druid, thaumaturge, flumph, flumph tap druid for 7g 2 cards 8gUW floating
Dance x=7 broom, reflectionsx4 (wizard?), mirrormade (blank?), terferi's ageless insight, thaumaturge becomes a druid taps, then a broom. 15g floating
thundering sparkmage (+4x from reflections), resolve a damage trigger for flumphs
can redraw the island with redcap melee+quandrix command, (this is why I put in the second flumph)
then draw trickery+island, trickery the real sparkmage, into scaled herbalist, which can then tap to put in the island
Next draw trigger can get sea dasher to delegendify the ageless insight and allow us to copy it with thaumabroom.
after we have a second teferi's ageless insights we can use each flumph trigger to draw
island, command, redcap melee, flumph
allowing us to get a U for each of the ~50 cards left in the opponent's deck.
Edit: probably want to also make thaumabroom progress in the meantime with like Omen of the Hunt, so draws would be like:
island, Q command, redcap melee, flumph, Q command, Q command, Omen of the Hunt, X
We also may want to bring back a tormod's crypt with the dance in order to have sacrifices on demand; to get maximum value out of every omen beyond maybe the first.
We don't need all 4 on wizard, sure, but my thought was that we'd just bounce the octopus back to hand with unkicked into the roil when we want to go off, that way we don't need to draw it.
Managing the thaumabrooms is a bit tricky as they have to ETB as reflections of littjara to be able to choose a creature type, I don't think its a huge problem but definitely not as simple as just swap everything over.
The different operations that can be performed on thaumabrooms, from the starting state of "most of them are brooms", is:
- to double the number of brooms, if we have enough mana, simply sac something.
- to copy something that doesn't need an ETB, simply play an enchantment. Another can be played later to turn them back to brooms. (Can copy a few crypts for easy sacrifices later, or a few druids for plenty of mana for those sacs)
- to copy something that does need an ETB, we sac something, then in response to the broom triggers, play an enchantment. Make some brooms into the thing we need ETB copies of, then resolve the sac triggers. The last can be any random enchantment to turn them back into brooms.
Wait, crap. I think this setup goes infinite:
- Starting with X thaumabrooms, and a crypt, and an enchantment in hand
- Sac the crypt; in response play the enchantment. Make most of the brooms into druids, a few into crypts, and a few into random enchantments.
- Resolve the sac triggers; spending 3X mana to make X druids (so X^2 mana), at least 1 crypt, and at least 2 enchantments
- First enchantment turns them all into brooms
- In response to the second enchantment about to enter, sac the crypt, and do it again.
So we need to use Stonecoil serpent rather than crypt; and omen also doesn't work for the same reason (it can be danced into a creature).
So we need a different flash enchantment (there are a few auras, also Ashiok's erasure); and we can't have creatures, artifacts, or enchantments that sac themselves or other permanents. Fortunately it looks like treasures are still OK as they can't be creatures and thus can't be copied by thaumabrooms. Can we get by with just the sac off of Redcap Melee?
Edit: We can also use a Fabled passage that the herbalist can put into play for a sac that we have more control over the timing of.
Edit: As for layers, post #72 almost works with the addition of using Beledros Witherbloom to convert life into mana; except that deedlit's layers there invole white mana but we're assuming that we have a white-producing land for dance.
Perhaps for the white mana we could instead use one of our combat steps to attack with an Old Gnawbone. We can also get one additional layer in that each instance of making a treasure makes lots through Xorn; and then each treasure taps for lots through Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.
Edit: We'd also need to ensure it's not possible to go off if witherbloom comes out before turn 4; as otherwise we'll have pests that can be copied with brooms and gain too much life. I'm pretty sure it's not possible to get witherbloom out before turn 4 *and* ult chandra on turn 4; but I'm not sure whether it is possible to go off with an early witherbloom *without* the chandra ult.
Edit: Plenty of "pay life to draw cards" effects can help turn life into draw (and hence blue) more safely than witherbloom; in particular Peer into the abyss probably eliminates the need for flumph, rendevous, and insight; and doesn't require using a combat step for the white.
Edit: CRAP; the stage doesn't work:
Start with UUU
Thaumabroom some stormcallers and herbalists
Mutate (UU), cast kicked roil (U).
Get several roil copies; the copies also count as kicked.
With each group of 3, draw redcap, qcommand, island; netting U.
Trying to think whether having only one qcommand (and only one of other important cards) can salvage it.
Edit: I think having only one qcommand *and* no teach by example salvages it. That way, qcommand can't be copied and thus only one of it may exist - it can't, say, be copied and have the original countered, having the copy target the original. Then, once qcommand is in the graveyard, it may only be cast via vadrok. Thus, the island can't be reshuffled multiple times from one batch of roil copies, without spending the blue for mutate again.