Erebos's Intervention is tricky to fit in, since it gives life just like we're doing with Toralf - I guess if we can make Toralf produce black mana. The other option for Toralf, besides giving it lifelink, is to trigger "when dies" triggers of creatures. But, I don't recall anything that can be turned into black mana. We can certainly investigate other "when dies" triggers, to see if there is anything fruitful.
The problem with switching stages is that the Toralf stage requires getting more Toralfs, so we need to flash in Omen of the Hunt or some other enchantment at the bottom. If we can get some small engine at the bottom, and leave enough for Octopus/Investigator to still get a stage later, that could work.
Yeah it doesn't seem quite worth it to swap the stages.
I just don't really see room for improvements, there's no safe way to make more reflections, (all of the clones than can copy it also copy treasures) and two is enough.
optimizing the last few creatures really doesn't move the needle very much, especially after we make our first treasure.
Well, you never know what the next optimization could be! Toralf kinda just came out of nowhere for instance.
A small notational issue: When we had just one stage, having 45 expendable creatures meant we could more than 3 -> 3 -> 46 -> 7 from Vault Robbers, since the first Vault Robber produced more than 27 treasures, so we could generate more than 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 7 = 3 -> 3 -> 27 -> 6 Thaumaturges out of them. But, now that we have two stages, 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 6 = 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 1 -> 6) -> 5 = 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 3^^^3 -> 5, so we would need around 3^^^3 Treasures to generate 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 6 Thaumaturges, more than what we get from the first Vault Robber; so we actually get between 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 45 -> 6 and 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 46 -> 6 Thauamturges from the Vault Robbers.
Only a couple weeks to go until rotation; we should get this writeup done
Edit: A potential start that only uses one ultimatum, allowing a couple more creatures:
Openning hand: Serpant, trickery, the 2 lands, 3 other cards
T2: trickery serpent -> ultimatum [4 cards in hand]
Hit druid, woe strider, broom, thaumaturge, gyruda
gyruda finds luminous broodmoth
sac gyruda, comes back with flying and finds another gyruda, which finds tuktuk rubblefort (unfortunately, purphoros is odd cmc)
tap druid for 8 if my counting is correct; we may also sac and return for another burst of mana if needed
then we can play enchantment creatures from hand and/or sac gyruda for them, and go off from there. We can also get double value from our enchantment creatures by saccing them at instant speed to bring them back with flying. The other creatures needed to get started (xorn, vault robber, kinnan (not strictly needed but might as well have the first few treasures tap for 2)) are even cmc so can be found with gyruda. The rest (e.g. vadrok) can be in hand already or drawn via skemfar avenger (or played through a trickery).
I'm fairly confident that luminous broodmoth doesn't go infinite with the rest of the deck; there's no way to remove flying, and also we don't get a shuffle between gyruda triggers without a mutate. Though it's possible I missed something.
(also, not that it matters but Canyon Jerboa is redundant; as heartfire imolator already has prowess (also qcommand's +1/+1 counter mode))
Edit: This plan may also be able to remove Omen of the hunt as after a (few copies of) qcommand, the library is reset for gyruda to pull in the enchantment creatures, which can be brought back with flying at instant speed. However, this doesn't actually increase the expendable creature count, as it requires at least one (perhaps even two) enchantment creatures to remain in the deck. So it's probably easier to just stick with the omen.
Tibalt's Trickery mills the above and fetches Genesis Ultimatum to cast. We exile Genesis Ultimatum and fetch:
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Woe Strider
1 Xorn
1 Sorcerer's Broom
1 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
Gyruda triggers, and we can find and put Luminous Bloodmoth into play.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it comes back with a flying counter.
Gyruda triggers again, and we find another Gyruda, eliminating the first Gyruda.
The second Gyruda triggers, and we find Protean Thaumaturge.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching a third Gyruda.
The third Gyruda triggers, and fetches Tuktuk Rubblefort.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching a fourth Gyruda.
The fourth Gyruda triggers, and fetches Vault Robber.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching Nyxborn Colossus.
This triggers our Protean Thaumaturge, which becomes a copy of Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice Woe Strider; it comes back and creates another Goat token. This also triggers our Sorcerer's Brooms.
We tap CoDD for 12 green mana.
We pay 3 mana to copy our Thaumabroom - 9 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice Xorn; it comes back.
We pay 6 mana to copy our Thamaubrooms - 3 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice CoDD; it comes back.
We pay 3 mana to copy one Thaumabroom - 0 mana, 5 TSBs.
We tap the CoDD for 16 green mana.
We pay 9 mana to copy 3 more Thaumabrooms - 7 mana, 8 TSBs.
We cast Nyx Herald for 3 mana - 4 mana, 8 TSBs.
Our Thaumaturges trigger, and we convert them into 1 TSB, 9 TCoDDs.
Tap a TCoDD for 20 mana - 21 mana, 1 TSB.
Sacrifice Sorcerer's Broom, it comes back.
Pay 3 mana to copy one TSB - 18 mana, 2 TSBs.
Sacrifice Tuktuk Rubblefort, it comes back.
Pay 6 mana to copy two TSBs - 12 mana, 4 TSBs.
Sacrifice Vault Robber, it comes back.
Pay 12 mana to copy 4 TSBs - 0 mana, 8 TSBs.
Tap a 2nd TcoDD to generate 27 mana - 27 mana, 8 TSBs.
Sacrice the nontoken tapped TCoDD, it comes back as a Protean Thaumaturge.
Pay 24 mana to Copy 8 TSBs - 3 mana, 16 TSBs.
Sacrifice the first Goat Token.
Pay 3 mana to copy 1 TSB - 0 mana, 17 TSBs.
Tap the 3rd TCoDD to generate 35 mana - 35 mana, 17 TSBs.
Pay 33 mana to copy 11 TSBs - 2 mana, 28 TSBs.
Tap the 4th TCoDD to generate 46 mana - 48 mana, 28 TSBs.
Pay 12 mana to copy 4 TSBs - 36 mana, 32 TSBs.
Sacrifice the second Goat token.
Pay 36 mana to copy 12 TSBs - 0 mana, 44 TSBs.
Tap the 5th TCoDD to generate 61 mana - 61 mana, 44 TSBs.
Pay 60 mana to copy 20 TSBs - 1 mana, 64 TSBs.
Tap the 6th TCoDD to generate 81 mana - 82 mana, 64 TSBs.
Sacrifice the original Sorcerer's Broom.
Pay 81 mana to copy 27 TSBs. 1 mana, 91 TSBs.
Tap the 7th TCoDD to generate 107 Mana - 108 mana, 91 TSBs.
Pay 108 mana to copy 36 TSBs - 0 mana 127 TSBs.
Tap the 8th TCoDD to generate 143 mana - 143 mana, 127 TSBs.
Pay 3 mana to copy 1 TSB - 140 mana, 128 TSBs.
Sacrifice the original CoDD.
Pay 138 mana to copy 46 TSBs - 2 mana, 174 TSBs.
Tap the 9th TCoDD to generate 189 mana - 191 mana, 174 TSBs.
Pay 186 mana to copy 62 TSBs - 5 mana, 236 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana for the 2nd Nyx Herald - 2 mana, 236 TSBs.
This triggers our 8 TCoDDs, 236 TSBs, and 1 PT. We create 8 TSBs and 237 TCoDDs.
We have 237 TCoDDs and have 252 monsters to start. Each successive TCoDD gives us about 4/3 the mana of the previous one, so by the end we will generate about 3.08 * 10^32 mana, allowing us to create about 1.03 * 10^32 Thaumabrooms, or about 2^106.3.
The 3rd Nyx Herald will process similarly, getting us to about (4/3)^(2^106.3) > 2^2^105.
Then, we can sacrifice our 4 enchantment creatures one at a time, triggering both Luminous Bloodmoth and our Thaumabrooms. If we resolve the Bloodmoth before the Thaumabrooms, the enchantment creature will come back, and trigger our Thaumabrooms to copy other creatures. We can change all but a few to enchantment creatures, each of which triggers a process like the above, achieving exponentiation. So the total effect is to send X to an exponential tower of height X; all 4 sacrifices of enchantment creatures will thus take us to more than 2^^(2^^(2^^(2^^(2^2^105)))) > 2^^^7 Thaumabrooms.
We can use the final Constellation trigger to turn our PTs into more than 2^^^7 Xorns, allowing our Vault Robber to exile a creature card (say Sorcerer's Broom) and generate more than 2^^^7 Treasure tokens. We can then cast Arcane Investigator, and draw all the cards we need, allowing the main combo to start.
We have 48 creatures in total, of which we can exile 47 without losing the combo, leading to a final damage of more than 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 48 -> 6) -> 8 -> 8.
Yeah I've been chipping away at the writeup, focusing on the math and the stages that are unlikely to change much as the start/end gets optimized.
luminous broodmoth is a pretty nice way to optimize things. Koll, the forgemaster is another similar effect if we wanted to double up a bit via the arachnoform we are already playing, though its probably not worth it. (edit oops RTFC creature goes to hand not back in play)
As for omen of the hunt, its main use is being cast via a vadrok trigger, which is technically possible for an enchantment creature too, though it needs to get q commanded back in the library, then cast with tibalt's trickery. This kind of puts pressure on quandrix command as we also want to be reshuffling the island and octopus each time, and with the mill from trickery that nets -1 card from library each time. But Dual strike can let us get multiple q commands per vadrok trigger, so that seems fine. And we need dual strike for heliod's intervention anyway so we can't cut it.
Oh, it looks like we can use Skemfar Avenger to draw up to 19 more cards before we have to use [c}Vault Robber[/c]. So we can perhaps get access to about 19 enchantment creatures and Omen of the Hunt. This will allow us to get to more than 2^^21 Thaumabrooms the first time we play them, and then we can tetrate each time we sacrifice one of them, to get to more than 2^^^23 Thaumabrooms before we activate Vault Robber.
Yeah, it looks like one enchantment creature is enough, so we can go with either Omen of the Hunt, or another enchantment creature.
Say, does either Auspicious Starrix or Quandrix Cultivator go infinite with the stage? These cards allow us to play our Island from the library, but we still need to draw Sea-Dasher Octopus to keep going. So it still seems to require alternating between Sea-Dasher Octopus and Arcane Investigator, preserving the basic structure of the stage. But, I could be missing something more subtle.
If either of these cards work, we could be freed from using Scaled Herbalist, allowing us potentially to use Haste later for layers. Of course, we would also have to switch out of Circle of the Dreams Druid - perhaps that colorless setup that FortyTwo talked about could work?
Also, Quandrix Cultivator would limit our recursed lands to Forests and Islands, allowing other lands to be used later for the layers.
Unfortunately, we need to draw the island as otherwise we can just let the octopus resolve and bounce it with quandrix command, and avoid using draw triggers at all.
I'm leaning towards an enchantment creature over omen of the hunt because of the additional synergy with the broodmoth and sacrificing for free instead of 2G. but both of those effects end up being pretty negligible.
Hmm, Quandrix Cultivator requires an ETB trigger, which requires that we flash in an enchantment so that we can have an activated Thaumabroom copy it. Can we make it so that we need to draw to achieve this?
Unfortunately, I guess we can sacrifice something to activate our Thaumabrooms, then respond with a Sea-Dasher Octopus mutation. This triggers Vadrok, which can cast Quandrix Command from the graveyard to shuffle an enchantment into the library, and then cast Tibalt's Trickery to cast the enchantment.
Edit: Ugh, I've been down this road before - Jadzi is on the other side.
Edit: I guess, based on the above sequence to put any enchantment onto the battlefield, we can just as easily put in Arachnoform. Arachnoform will go to the graveyard when the creature it enchants dies, so we can recycle it easily.
So, we can drop Omen of the Hunt and still exile all of our enchantment creatures, I believe.
The main thing about Omen of the hunt is its ability to be cast at instant speed (in response to a bunch of broom sac triggers). Casting it off of vadrok doesn't actually do that; but bouncing it with roil does (or drawing it after a shuffle (edit: roil's not in the deck, so it is just drawing it)). And arachnoform doesn't do it.
If that is true, that would be a very good thing, because then we could use Quandrix Cultivator, and have to draw Omen of the Hunt to cast it at instant speed. That would get us more layers, which is a whole lot better than bumping our 48 to a 49!
But, I'm worried about responding with a casting of [c}Sea-Dasher Octopus[/c] to eventually put Omen of the Hunt into play.
Start: UUU, omen in grave, octo in hand island on field
Sac something, put broom triggers on the stack
Mutate octo (UU), 2 reflections
first: cast roiling regrowth, trickery octo, optional dual strike, qcom octo+omen+island+any 3 others
activate investigator; get draw triggers (U)
draw omen, get ETB brooms with it including cultivator (UU). This also makes the broom triggers still on the stack able to cause ETBs.
draw octo
resolve down to second octo; cast roiling regrowth, qcom island+any 2 others
resolve broom triggers for cultivator; get island (UUU)
back where we started with more brooms.
It also seems like a non-haste base would be tricky anyway. Other bases I'm aware of are paladium myr + kinnan (still needs haste), forsaken monument + crawling barrens (moots life, and requires animating an artifact which moots Orb of dragonkind), and strixhaven stadium + kinnan (which still requires animating an artifact to copy it), and birgi (not compatible with toralf)
Ah yes it looks like that works as a way to cut omen; and we don't need ETB brooms too often anyway (the stage works without making stormcaller every iteration, for instance)
(edit: Potential minor optimisation: in your start on #181, we don't really need xorn and robber so early; instead they could be fetched later by having a broom ETB as gyruda. Would it be better to get the thaumaturge out a little earlier? Or perhaps use a token maker to maximise early druid mana?)
Oh, a broom can ETB as Gyruda! That's good news, that means we can fetch every even mana creature in the deck, including as many even mana enchantment creatures we can stuff in - and then we can use Skemfar Avenger for more draws. Okay, I'll have to rethink this. We may even want to cut a Gyruda or two, to fit as many enchantment creatures into the deck as we can.
Token makers would be nice, but the fact that we'll be able to fetch every enchantment creature in the deck means we want to maximize those.
Remember to take into account that gyruda mills 4 cards, so after at most 15 triggers we don't get anything more until we shuffle (ideally copying the qcommand a lot through stormcaller + dual strike)
Tibalt's Trickery mills the above and fetches Genesis Ultimatum to cast. We exile Genesis Ultimatum and fetch:
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Woe Strider
1 Xorn
1 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
1 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
Gyruda triggers, and we can find and put Luminous Bloodmoth into play.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it comes back with a flying counter.
Gyruda triggers again, and we find another Gyruda, eliminating the first Gyruda.
The second Gyruda triggers, and we find Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching Protean Thaumaturge.
We tap the CoDD for 9 green mana.
We cast Nyx Herald for 3 green mana. This triggers our Protean Thurmatauge, which turns into a copy of Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice CoDD; it comes back untapped with a flying counter.
This triggers our Brooms; we pay 3 mana to make a copy of our Thaumabroom - 3 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice Xorn; it comes back, and our Thaumabrooms trigger.
We pay 3 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 0 mana, 3 TSBs.
We tap CoDD for 12 green mana - 13 mana, 3 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana to copy the other Thaumabroom - 10 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice the original Sorcerer's Broom; it comes back, and our Thaumabrooms trigger.
We pay 6 mana to copy 2 Thuamabrooms - 3 mana, 7 TSBs.
We pay 3 green mana to cast a second Nyx Herald, triggering our Thaumabrooms. We turn 6 of them into TCoDDs (including the original), and leave 1 as a TSB.
Tap the nontoken TCoDD to add 17 green mana - 17 mana, 1 TSB.
We sacrifice the nontoken TCoDD - it comes back as a Protean Thaumaturge with a flying counter.
We pay 3 mana to copy the Thaumabroom - 14 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice a Goat token. (15 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 6 mana to copy the Thaumabrooms - 8 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice the Sorcerer's Broom. (14 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 6 mana to copy 3 Thaumabrooms - 2 mana, 6 TSBs.
Tap the second TCoDD for 20 green mana - 22 mana, 6 TSBs.
We pay 6 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 16 mana, 8 TSBs.
We sacrifice the CoDD. (13 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 15 mana to copy 5 Thaumabrooms - 1 mana, 13 TSBs.
Tap the third TCoDD for 26 green mana - 27 mana, 13 TSBs.
We pay 9 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 18 mana, 16 TSBs.
We sacrifice a tapped TCoDD. (12 non-TSB creatures, including 5 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 18 mana to copy 6 Thuamabrooms - 0 mana, 22 TSBs.
We tap the fourth TCoDD for 34 green mana - 34 mana, 22 TSBs.
We pay 30 mana to copy 10 Thaumabrooms - 4 mana, 32 TSBs.
We sacrifice a second tapped TCoDD. (11 non-TSB creatures, including 4 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 3 mana to copy 1 Thaumabroom - 1 mana, 33 TSBs.
We tap the fifth TCodd for 44 green mana - 45 mana, 33 TSBs.
We pay 45 mana to copy 15 Thaumabrooms - 0 mana, 48 TSBs.
We tap the sixth TCoDD for 59 green mana - 59 mana, 48 TSBs.
We pay 48 mana to copy 16 Thaumabrooms - 11 mana, 64 TSBs.
We sacrifice a third tapped TCoDD (10 non-TSB creatures, including 3 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 6 mana to copy 2 Thaumabrooms - 5 mana, 66 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana to cast a third Nyx Herald.
This triggers our 69 Protean Thaumaturges, of which 2 are tapped. We convert these into 2 tapped TSBs, and 67 untapped TCoDDs.
We can tap 67 TCoDDs, starting from 76 mana. Each successive TCoDD taps for about 4/3 of the previous one, so we will wind up with about 53.6 billion mana, which will allow us to create about 17.9 billion Thamabrooms.
We can then cast Nylea, Keen-Eyed with about 17.9 billion Thaumabrooms, allowing us to create roughly (4/3)^(17.9 billion) > 2^(7.4 billion) > 2^(2^32) > 2^^5 Thaumabrooms. We can use Nylea, Keen-Eyed to draw another 17 enchantment creatures, each one applying an exponentiation, so after playing all 17 enchantment creatures, we wind up with more than 2^^22 Thaumabrooms.
Then, we can start sacrificing the enchantment creatures one by one. This triggers both Luminous Bloodmoth bringing the enchantment creature back into play, and the Thaumabrooms' copy abilities. We resolve the Luminous Bloodmoth ability first, activating our Thaumabrooms constellation triggers, and allowing them to copy enchantment creatures before the copy abilities resolve. This will create a new enchantment for each Thaumabroom in play, allowing us to exponentiate that many times. This has the effect of taking the number of Thaumabrooms from X to an exponential tower of height X, i.e. tetration. We start with 2^^22 >> 65536 = 2^^^3 Thaumabrooms, so 22 tetrations will take the number of Thauamabrooms to more than 2^^^25.
At the end, we can turn one Thaumabroom into a Gyruda prior to copying, allowing us to create a Gyruda and fetch Vault Robber. We can turn the remaining Thaumabroooms into copies of Xorn. We can activate Vault Robber and exile an inessential creature card (a Gyruda, say), creating more than 2^^^25 Treasure tokens. We can use Nylea, Keen-Eyed to draw Arcane Investigator (and perhaps Faridah, Devil's Chosen), and use Arcane Investigator to draw the remaining cards, allowing us to start the combo.
We have 49 creatures in total, of which we can exile 48 without losing the combo, leading to a final damage of more than 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 49 -> 6) -> 8 -> 8.
That seems like it works, except woe strider can't sacrifice itself, which looks like it just loses us a green mana, but that kind of cascades through the rest of the line.
Have in the opening hand the two reflections and qcom. rather than more enchantment creatures; because nylea can draw those anyway.
Play kinnan, intimidator, then mutate octo onto kinnan.
Play a reflection on octo, making a lot of kinnans.
Tap two treasures for lots of U and lots of R. (5 treasures used total. I thought about using gyruda to fetch kinnan and intimidator to save 2 treasures; however that would result in fewer treasures in the first place so doesn't seem worth it)
Sac the original kinnan/octo
Mutate vadrok under something random, casting arachno to make a broom a copy of it. Play qcom from hand to bounce vadrok and shuffle octo. Sac what arachno is on.
Then, we can cast mutate vadrok under this new pile, playing arachnoform (making a broom a copy of it) and qcom (bouncing it), as many times as necessary (about 6). Also in between one of those steps we mutate octo onto faridah (that we fetch with kinnan; saving a red mana over casting it) and have brooms copy that too, and sac it, redrawing it with nalya after shuffling it with the next qcom. We could do the same with Toralf either now or later too. Finally play the investigator and we're good to go for the full stage.
(minor interaction I also noticed: once we have skemfar avenger in play; it would be convenient for it to never leave play; though creatures with arachnoform dying may cause it to trigger and lose us life when we don't want to. However, it's actually fine since we can either use intimidator to have the arachnoformd creature lose its types, or bounce the arachnoformed creature with qcom rather than saccing it).
Paying extra green mana to fetch cards in the early part of the start is going to result in the loss of an enormous number of Treasure tokens: more than 2^^^25. So we should just try to maximize the number of Treasure tokens, and then secondarily try to use those tokens efficiently.
Edit: Okay, bear with me guys; I'm looking to make some major changes to the deck. Primal Might can deal a lot of damage to an opponent's creature, and can get copies from Sea Gate Stormcaller. So maybe this is another layer?
The first question is how to get green mana for it. The Great Henge is the obvious choice, but it has a problematic final ability, where we draw a card whenever a nontoken creature enters the battlefield. In the current version, we can cheaply get nontoken creatures to come on the battlefield by sacrificing a creature, putting in the library with Quandrix Command, and using Tibalt's Trickery to put it onto the battlefield. I believe being able to draw a card this way will go infinite, so this doesn't work currently.
But, what if we made it hard to sacrifice creatures? Then, the only way to get a nontoken creature off the battlefield will be to bounce it back to our hand with Quandrix Command, and then we will have to spend mana to cast it. So long as casting a creature is at least as expensive as spending a blue for Arcane Investigator, it should be okay.
But, of course we will need to be able to sacrifice something, and put enchantments onto the battlefield. Going back to using an Omen seems like a natural idea here. I'd like to use Omen of the Sea, since it doesn't require going to another color. We can cast it using Tibalt's Trickery, and get a card draw with it, drawing an Island. But, we have to pay a blue to sacrifice it, so we wind up spending the blue that we gain. But, the timing of this is a little wonky, so I'm not sure if this entirely works. If it does, this is probably what we want to go with.
If we go with Omen of the Dead, then we need need some black mana; adding a Swamp should do. This makes black mana relatively cheap, so we probably don't want to have monoblack creatures; even though they don't have flash, we can probably make an infinite starting from casting a monoblack creature and drawing a card via The Great Henge. We can switch them all out though; Clackbridge Troll can be replaced by Pursued Whale, Duskfang Mentor can be replaced with Sporeweb Weaver, and Skemfar Avenger can be replaced by Beledros Witherbloom. Woe Strider needs to be dropped anyway.
Of course, the big question (or the one I see right now; you guys will probably point out other problems with this) is if we have enough resources to get started. We do have the ability to chain up to 4 Genesis Ultimatums, casting them as many as 10 times. So I figure we can probably get started, but we will need to look at the start carefully.
Good point on maximising efficiency of the start; we do want to maximise treasures first (so having all the enchantment creatures in hand) and then optimise treasure usage second.
Best I can think of is after your start, play kinnan with one treasure, tap a treasure for UU and use to mutate octo + kinnan up skemfar, another 2 treasures for RRUU to vadrok up aracnoform and make a lot of kinnans + a few skemfars, use them to draw a few cards, then use 2 treasures for lots of U and R and continue as before. 6 treasures total.
The potential changes seem interesting, haven't checked them thoroughly. Bit nervous about making such big changes so close to the deadline though.
Another potential idea I've just had: Could we somehow use Aegar, the freezing flame to convert the output of the damage stage into input of the blue stage? If so that would free up life as an additional resource for later layers.
Something that life could be used for is that earlier there was an idea to use Orvar as the main copy engine instead of brooms, which would allow Avalanche caller to make a bunch of tapped snow lands for Beladros witherbloom to untap.
Oh, damn, just realised there's a problem in the current deck as well: Orb of dragonkind can produce extra mana doe to Kinnan, and that extra mana doesn't have the restriction of being only usable on dragons.
Yeah, either Aegar, the Freezing Flame or Flumph can turn our damage into card draws. But, it seems that it has to be a continuous string of card draws, we don't have the ability to wait on the card draws to use them at an opportune time. So, it looks like we create a layer of the blue mana stage rather than the full stage.
One potential fix is the new idea I just mentioned above. That appears to get 9 layers, so it's 3 layers better than our current deck. But yeah, needs to be checked carefully.
It looks the The Great Henge, if we can make it work, can actually free up life for the later layers. We can't cheaply destroy creatures to draw cards, but we can with Toralf, God of Fury. Also, after destroying them, we can delay the playing of them to get the Island set up for drawing, so I think that can successfully build up the stage.
However, I'm not immediately seeing an improvement due to having life available. Unfortunately, The Great Henge gives us life, so we can't put life stages after it if we put it first. We could use tapped lands instead, and use Beledros Witherbloom to untap for green mana; we could then follow with Erebos's or Heliod's Intevention, but I don't know how to link those to anything other than Treasure after that. Strangely, there is an X life gain spell for black, but not for green!
Edit: So, I've been trying to get an infinite combo by using a cheap creature that we can bounce back to our hand and recast (with an empty stack) to get a card draw, and I haven't been able to get one. This doesn't necessarily mean anything of course. The problems I've been having: we need to draw both the Island and the Octopus to loop, and we only get one draw by playing a creature. If we try to bounce the Octopus instead, then we have to bounce the cheap creature, the Octopus, and sometimes the creature Arachnoform is enchanting in order to make progress. I suppose we can do this with two copies of Reflections of Littjara. We do need something for Tibalt's Trickery to counter though - okay this is starting to be very complicated.
The problem with switching stages is that the Toralf stage requires getting more Toralfs, so we need to flash in Omen of the Hunt or some other enchantment at the bottom. If we can get some small engine at the bottom, and leave enough for Octopus/Investigator to still get a stage later, that could work.
I just don't really see room for improvements, there's no safe way to make more reflections, (all of the clones than can copy it also copy treasures) and two is enough.
optimizing the last few creatures really doesn't move the needle very much, especially after we make our first treasure.
A small notational issue: When we had just one stage, having 45 expendable creatures meant we could more than 3 -> 3 -> 46 -> 7 from Vault Robbers, since the first Vault Robber produced more than 27 treasures, so we could generate more than 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 7 = 3 -> 3 -> 27 -> 6 Thaumaturges out of them. But, now that we have two stages, 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 6 = 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 1 -> 6) -> 5 = 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 3^^^3 -> 5, so we would need around 3^^^3 Treasures to generate 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 2 -> 6 Thaumaturges, more than what we get from the first Vault Robber; so we actually get between 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 45 -> 6 and 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 46 -> 6 Thauamturges from the Vault Robbers.
Edit: A potential start that only uses one ultimatum, allowing a couple more creatures:
Openning hand: Serpant, trickery, the 2 lands, 3 other cards
T2: trickery serpent -> ultimatum [4 cards in hand]
Hit druid, woe strider, broom, thaumaturge, gyruda
gyruda finds luminous broodmoth
sac gyruda, comes back with flying and finds another gyruda, which finds tuktuk rubblefort (unfortunately, purphoros is odd cmc)
tap druid for 8 if my counting is correct; we may also sac and return for another burst of mana if needed
then we can play enchantment creatures from hand and/or sac gyruda for them, and go off from there. We can also get double value from our enchantment creatures by saccing them at instant speed to bring them back with flying. The other creatures needed to get started (xorn, vault robber, kinnan (not strictly needed but might as well have the first few treasures tap for 2)) are even cmc so can be found with gyruda. The rest (e.g. vadrok) can be in hand already or drawn via skemfar avenger (or played through a trickery).
I'm fairly confident that luminous broodmoth doesn't go infinite with the rest of the deck; there's no way to remove flying, and also we don't get a shuffle between gyruda triggers without a mutate. Though it's possible I missed something.
(also, not that it matters but Canyon Jerboa is redundant; as heartfire imolator already has prowess (also qcommand's +1/+1 counter mode))
Edit: This plan may also be able to remove Omen of the hunt as after a (few copies of) qcommand, the library is reset for gyruda to pull in the enchantment creatures, which can be brought back with flying at instant speed. However, this doesn't actually increase the expendable creature count, as it requires at least one (perhaps even two) enchantment creatures to remain in the deck. So it's probably easier to just stick with the omen.
Will work out the start.
Edit: Okay, an example start is:
1 Akoum Teeth
2 Island
3 Stonecoil Serpent
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Arcane Investigator
6 Nyx Herald
7 Nyx Herald
8 Nyx Herald
Mill:
?
Tibalt's Trickery mills the above and fetches Genesis Ultimatum to cast. We exile Genesis Ultimatum and fetch:
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Woe Strider
1 Xorn
1 Sorcerer's Broom
1 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
Gyruda triggers, and we can find and put Luminous Bloodmoth into play.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it comes back with a flying counter.
Gyruda triggers again, and we find another Gyruda, eliminating the first Gyruda.
The second Gyruda triggers, and we find Protean Thaumaturge.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching a third Gyruda.
The third Gyruda triggers, and fetches Tuktuk Rubblefort.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching a fourth Gyruda.
The fourth Gyruda triggers, and fetches Vault Robber.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching Nyxborn Colossus.
This triggers our Protean Thaumaturge, which becomes a copy of Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice Woe Strider; it comes back and creates another Goat token. This also triggers our Sorcerer's Brooms.
We tap CoDD for 12 green mana.
We pay 3 mana to copy our Thaumabroom - 9 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice Xorn; it comes back.
We pay 6 mana to copy our Thamaubrooms - 3 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice CoDD; it comes back.
We pay 3 mana to copy one Thaumabroom - 0 mana, 5 TSBs.
We tap the CoDD for 16 green mana.
We pay 9 mana to copy 3 more Thaumabrooms - 7 mana, 8 TSBs.
We cast Nyx Herald for 3 mana - 4 mana, 8 TSBs.
Our Thaumaturges trigger, and we convert them into 1 TSB, 9 TCoDDs.
Tap a TCoDD for 20 mana - 21 mana, 1 TSB.
Sacrifice Sorcerer's Broom, it comes back.
Pay 3 mana to copy one TSB - 18 mana, 2 TSBs.
Sacrifice Tuktuk Rubblefort, it comes back.
Pay 6 mana to copy two TSBs - 12 mana, 4 TSBs.
Sacrifice Vault Robber, it comes back.
Pay 12 mana to copy 4 TSBs - 0 mana, 8 TSBs.
Tap a 2nd TcoDD to generate 27 mana - 27 mana, 8 TSBs.
Sacrice the nontoken tapped TCoDD, it comes back as a Protean Thaumaturge.
Pay 24 mana to Copy 8 TSBs - 3 mana, 16 TSBs.
Sacrifice the first Goat Token.
Pay 3 mana to copy 1 TSB - 0 mana, 17 TSBs.
Tap the 3rd TCoDD to generate 35 mana - 35 mana, 17 TSBs.
Pay 33 mana to copy 11 TSBs - 2 mana, 28 TSBs.
Tap the 4th TCoDD to generate 46 mana - 48 mana, 28 TSBs.
Pay 12 mana to copy 4 TSBs - 36 mana, 32 TSBs.
Sacrifice the second Goat token.
Pay 36 mana to copy 12 TSBs - 0 mana, 44 TSBs.
Tap the 5th TCoDD to generate 61 mana - 61 mana, 44 TSBs.
Pay 60 mana to copy 20 TSBs - 1 mana, 64 TSBs.
Tap the 6th TCoDD to generate 81 mana - 82 mana, 64 TSBs.
Sacrifice the original Sorcerer's Broom.
Pay 81 mana to copy 27 TSBs. 1 mana, 91 TSBs.
Tap the 7th TCoDD to generate 107 Mana - 108 mana, 91 TSBs.
Pay 108 mana to copy 36 TSBs - 0 mana 127 TSBs.
Tap the 8th TCoDD to generate 143 mana - 143 mana, 127 TSBs.
Pay 3 mana to copy 1 TSB - 140 mana, 128 TSBs.
Sacrifice the original CoDD.
Pay 138 mana to copy 46 TSBs - 2 mana, 174 TSBs.
Tap the 9th TCoDD to generate 189 mana - 191 mana, 174 TSBs.
Pay 186 mana to copy 62 TSBs - 5 mana, 236 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana for the 2nd Nyx Herald - 2 mana, 236 TSBs.
This triggers our 8 TCoDDs, 236 TSBs, and 1 PT. We create 8 TSBs and 237 TCoDDs.
We have 237 TCoDDs and have 252 monsters to start. Each successive TCoDD gives us about 4/3 the mana of the previous one, so by the end we will generate about 3.08 * 10^32 mana, allowing us to create about 1.03 * 10^32 Thaumabrooms, or about 2^106.3.
The 3rd Nyx Herald will process similarly, getting us to about (4/3)^(2^106.3) > 2^2^105.
Then, we can sacrifice our 4 enchantment creatures one at a time, triggering both Luminous Bloodmoth and our Thaumabrooms. If we resolve the Bloodmoth before the Thaumabrooms, the enchantment creature will come back, and trigger our Thaumabrooms to copy other creatures. We can change all but a few to enchantment creatures, each of which triggers a process like the above, achieving exponentiation. So the total effect is to send X to an exponential tower of height X; all 4 sacrifices of enchantment creatures will thus take us to more than 2^^(2^^(2^^(2^^(2^2^105)))) > 2^^^7 Thaumabrooms.
We can use the final Constellation trigger to turn our PTs into more than 2^^^7 Xorns, allowing our Vault Robber to exile a creature card (say Sorcerer's Broom) and generate more than 2^^^7 Treasure tokens. We can then cast Arcane Investigator, and draw all the cards we need, allowing the main combo to start.
We have 48 creatures in total, of which we can exile 47 without losing the combo, leading to a final damage of more than 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 48 -> 6) -> 8 -> 8.
luminous broodmoth is a pretty nice way to optimize things. Koll, the forgemaster is another similar effect if we wanted to double up a bit via the arachnoform we are already playing, though its probably not worth it. (edit oops RTFC creature goes to hand not back in play)
As for omen of the hunt, its main use is being cast via a vadrok trigger, which is technically possible for an enchantment creature too, though it needs to get q commanded back in the library, then cast with tibalt's trickery. This kind of puts pressure on quandrix command as we also want to be reshuffling the island and octopus each time, and with the mill from trickery that nets -1 card from library each time. But Dual strike can let us get multiple q commands per vadrok trigger, so that seems fine. And we need dual strike for heliod's intervention anyway so we can't cut it.
Yeah, it looks like one enchantment creature is enough, so we can go with either Omen of the Hunt, or another enchantment creature.
Say, does either Auspicious Starrix or Quandrix Cultivator go infinite with the stage? These cards allow us to play our Island from the library, but we still need to draw Sea-Dasher Octopus to keep going. So it still seems to require alternating between Sea-Dasher Octopus and Arcane Investigator, preserving the basic structure of the stage. But, I could be missing something more subtle.
If either of these cards work, we could be freed from using Scaled Herbalist, allowing us potentially to use Haste later for layers. Of course, we would also have to switch out of Circle of the Dreams Druid - perhaps that colorless setup that FortyTwo talked about could work?
Also, Quandrix Cultivator would limit our recursed lands to Forests and Islands, allowing other lands to be used later for the layers.
I'm leaning towards an enchantment creature over omen of the hunt because of the additional synergy with the broodmoth and sacrificing for free instead of 2G. but both of those effects end up being pretty negligible.
Hmm, Quandrix Cultivator requires an ETB trigger, which requires that we flash in an enchantment so that we can have an activated Thaumabroom copy it. Can we make it so that we need to draw to achieve this?
Unfortunately, I guess we can sacrifice something to activate our Thaumabrooms, then respond with a Sea-Dasher Octopus mutation. This triggers Vadrok, which can cast Quandrix Command from the graveyard to shuffle an enchantment into the library, and then cast Tibalt's Trickery to cast the enchantment.
Edit: I think Journey to the Oracle should work?
Edit: Ugh, I've been down this road before - Jadzi is on the other side.
Edit: I guess, based on the above sequence to put any enchantment onto the battlefield, we can just as easily put in Arachnoform. Arachnoform will go to the graveyard when the creature it enchants dies, so we can recycle it easily.
So, we can drop Omen of the Hunt and still exile all of our enchantment creatures, I believe.
But, I'm worried about responding with a casting of [c}Sea-Dasher Octopus[/c] to eventually put Omen of the Hunt into play.
Start: UUU, omen in grave, octo in hand island on field
Sac something, put broom triggers on the stack
Mutate octo (UU), 2 reflections
first: cast roiling regrowth, trickery octo, optional dual strike, qcom octo+omen+island+any 3 others
activate investigator; get draw triggers (U)
draw omen, get ETB brooms with it including cultivator (UU). This also makes the broom triggers still on the stack able to cause ETBs.
draw octo
resolve down to second octo; cast roiling regrowth, qcom island+any 2 others
resolve broom triggers for cultivator; get island (UUU)
back where we started with more brooms.
It also seems like a non-haste base would be tricky anyway. Other bases I'm aware of are paladium myr + kinnan (still needs haste), forsaken monument + crawling barrens (moots life, and requires animating an artifact which moots Orb of dragonkind), and strixhaven stadium + kinnan (which still requires animating an artifact to copy it), and birgi (not compatible with toralf)
But, it looks like we can also respond to a sacrifice to cast Sea-Dasher Octopus, and then have Arachnoform come into play off of a Tibalt's Trickery cast.
(edit: Potential minor optimisation: in your start on #181, we don't really need xorn and robber so early; instead they could be fetched later by having a broom ETB as gyruda. Would it be better to get the thaumaturge out a little earlier? Or perhaps use a token maker to maximise early druid mana?)
Token makers would be nice, but the fact that we'll be able to fetch every enchantment creature in the deck means we want to maximize those.
Is Nylea, Keen-Eyed okay? It can fetch Sea-Dasher Octopus, but we need to draw the Island anyway.
1 Akoum Teeth
2 Island
3 Stonecoil Serpent
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Nylea, Keen-Eyed
6 Nyx Herald
7 Nyx Herald
8 Nyx Herald
Mill:
one card
Tibalt's Trickery mills the above and fetches Genesis Ultimatum to cast. We exile Genesis Ultimatum and fetch:
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Woe Strider
1 Xorn
1 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
1 Gyruda, Doom of Depths
Gyruda triggers, and we can find and put Luminous Bloodmoth into play.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it comes back with a flying counter.
Gyruda triggers again, and we find another Gyruda, eliminating the first Gyruda.
The second Gyruda triggers, and we find Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice Gyruda, and it triggers both Luminous Bloodbath and our Sorcerer's Broom.
We resolve bringing back Gyruda first, fetching Protean Thaumaturge.
We tap the CoDD for 9 green mana.
We cast Nyx Herald for 3 green mana. This triggers our Protean Thurmatauge, which turns into a copy of Sorcerer's Broom.
We sacrifice CoDD; it comes back untapped with a flying counter.
This triggers our Brooms; we pay 3 mana to make a copy of our Thaumabroom - 3 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice Xorn; it comes back, and our Thaumabrooms trigger.
We pay 3 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 0 mana, 3 TSBs.
We tap CoDD for 12 green mana - 13 mana, 3 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana to copy the other Thaumabroom - 10 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice the original Sorcerer's Broom; it comes back, and our Thaumabrooms trigger.
We pay 6 mana to copy 2 Thuamabrooms - 3 mana, 7 TSBs.
We pay 3 green mana to cast a second Nyx Herald, triggering our Thaumabrooms. We turn 6 of them into TCoDDs (including the original), and leave 1 as a TSB.
Tap the nontoken TCoDD to add 17 green mana - 17 mana, 1 TSB.
We sacrifice the nontoken TCoDD - it comes back as a Protean Thaumaturge with a flying counter.
We pay 3 mana to copy the Thaumabroom - 14 mana, 2 TSBs.
We sacrifice a Goat token. (15 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 6 mana to copy the Thaumabrooms - 8 mana, 4 TSBs.
We sacrifice the Sorcerer's Broom. (14 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 6 mana to copy 3 Thaumabrooms - 2 mana, 6 TSBs.
Tap the second TCoDD for 20 green mana - 22 mana, 6 TSBs.
We pay 6 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 16 mana, 8 TSBs.
We sacrifice the CoDD. (13 non-TSB creatures)
We pay 15 mana to copy 5 Thaumabrooms - 1 mana, 13 TSBs.
Tap the third TCoDD for 26 green mana - 27 mana, 13 TSBs.
We pay 9 mana to copy a Thaumabroom - 18 mana, 16 TSBs.
We sacrifice a tapped TCoDD. (12 non-TSB creatures, including 5 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 18 mana to copy 6 Thuamabrooms - 0 mana, 22 TSBs.
We tap the fourth TCoDD for 34 green mana - 34 mana, 22 TSBs.
We pay 30 mana to copy 10 Thaumabrooms - 4 mana, 32 TSBs.
We sacrifice a second tapped TCoDD. (11 non-TSB creatures, including 4 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 3 mana to copy 1 Thaumabroom - 1 mana, 33 TSBs.
We tap the fifth TCodd for 44 green mana - 45 mana, 33 TSBs.
We pay 45 mana to copy 15 Thaumabrooms - 0 mana, 48 TSBs.
We tap the sixth TCoDD for 59 green mana - 59 mana, 48 TSBs.
We pay 48 mana to copy 16 Thaumabrooms - 11 mana, 64 TSBs.
We sacrifice a third tapped TCoDD (10 non-TSB creatures, including 3 non-TSB PTs)
We pay 6 mana to copy 2 Thaumabrooms - 5 mana, 66 TSBs.
We pay 3 mana to cast a third Nyx Herald.
This triggers our 69 Protean Thaumaturges, of which 2 are tapped. We convert these into 2 tapped TSBs, and 67 untapped TCoDDs.
We can tap 67 TCoDDs, starting from 76 mana. Each successive TCoDD taps for about 4/3 of the previous one, so we will wind up with about 53.6 billion mana, which will allow us to create about 17.9 billion Thamabrooms.
We can then cast Nylea, Keen-Eyed with about 17.9 billion Thaumabrooms, allowing us to create roughly (4/3)^(17.9 billion) > 2^(7.4 billion) > 2^(2^32) > 2^^5 Thaumabrooms. We can use Nylea, Keen-Eyed to draw another 17 enchantment creatures, each one applying an exponentiation, so after playing all 17 enchantment creatures, we wind up with more than 2^^22 Thaumabrooms.
Then, we can start sacrificing the enchantment creatures one by one. This triggers both Luminous Bloodmoth bringing the enchantment creature back into play, and the Thaumabrooms' copy abilities. We resolve the Luminous Bloodmoth ability first, activating our Thaumabrooms constellation triggers, and allowing them to copy enchantment creatures before the copy abilities resolve. This will create a new enchantment for each Thaumabroom in play, allowing us to exponentiate that many times. This has the effect of taking the number of Thaumabrooms from X to an exponential tower of height X, i.e. tetration. We start with 2^^22 >> 65536 = 2^^^3 Thaumabrooms, so 22 tetrations will take the number of Thauamabrooms to more than 2^^^25.
At the end, we can turn one Thaumabroom into a Gyruda prior to copying, allowing us to create a Gyruda and fetch Vault Robber. We can turn the remaining Thaumabroooms into copies of Xorn. We can activate Vault Robber and exile an inessential creature card (a Gyruda, say), creating more than 2^^^25 Treasure tokens. We can use Nylea, Keen-Eyed to draw Arcane Investigator (and perhaps Faridah, Devil's Chosen), and use Arcane Investigator to draw the remaining cards, allowing us to start the combo.
We have 49 creatures in total, of which we can exile 48 without losing the combo, leading to a final damage of more than 3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> 3 -> 49 -> 6) -> 8 -> 8.
Have in the opening hand the two reflections and qcom. rather than more enchantment creatures; because nylea can draw those anyway.
Play kinnan, intimidator, then mutate octo onto kinnan.
Play a reflection on octo, making a lot of kinnans.
Tap two treasures for lots of U and lots of R. (5 treasures used total. I thought about using gyruda to fetch kinnan and intimidator to save 2 treasures; however that would result in fewer treasures in the first place so doesn't seem worth it)
Sac the original kinnan/octo
Mutate vadrok under something random, casting arachno to make a broom a copy of it. Play qcom from hand to bounce vadrok and shuffle octo. Sac what arachno is on.
Then, we can cast mutate vadrok under this new pile, playing arachnoform (making a broom a copy of it) and qcom (bouncing it), as many times as necessary (about 6). Also in between one of those steps we mutate octo onto faridah (that we fetch with kinnan; saving a red mana over casting it) and have brooms copy that too, and sac it, redrawing it with nalya after shuffling it with the next qcom. We could do the same with Toralf either now or later too. Finally play the investigator and we're good to go for the full stage.
(minor interaction I also noticed: once we have skemfar avenger in play; it would be convenient for it to never leave play; though creatures with arachnoform dying may cause it to trigger and lose us life when we don't want to. However, it's actually fine since we can either use intimidator to have the arachnoformd creature lose its types, or bounce the arachnoformed creature with qcom rather than saccing it).
Edit: Okay, bear with me guys; I'm looking to make some major changes to the deck. Primal Might can deal a lot of damage to an opponent's creature, and can get copies from Sea Gate Stormcaller. So maybe this is another layer?
The first question is how to get green mana for it. The Great Henge is the obvious choice, but it has a problematic final ability, where we draw a card whenever a nontoken creature enters the battlefield. In the current version, we can cheaply get nontoken creatures to come on the battlefield by sacrificing a creature, putting in the library with Quandrix Command, and using Tibalt's Trickery to put it onto the battlefield. I believe being able to draw a card this way will go infinite, so this doesn't work currently.
But, what if we made it hard to sacrifice creatures? Then, the only way to get a nontoken creature off the battlefield will be to bounce it back to our hand with Quandrix Command, and then we will have to spend mana to cast it. So long as casting a creature is at least as expensive as spending a blue for Arcane Investigator, it should be okay.
But, of course we will need to be able to sacrifice something, and put enchantments onto the battlefield. Going back to using an Omen seems like a natural idea here. I'd like to use Omen of the Sea, since it doesn't require going to another color. We can cast it using Tibalt's Trickery, and get a card draw with it, drawing an Island. But, we have to pay a blue to sacrifice it, so we wind up spending the blue that we gain. But, the timing of this is a little wonky, so I'm not sure if this entirely works. If it does, this is probably what we want to go with.
If Omen of the Sea doesn't work, we can go to one of the other Omens. Omen of the Forge deals damage too cheaply, and Omen of the Hunt uses the color of mana we're trying to preserve, so it's either Omen of the Dead or Omen of the Sun.
If we go with Omen of the Dead, then we need need some black mana; adding a Swamp should do. This makes black mana relatively cheap, so we probably don't want to have monoblack creatures; even though they don't have flash, we can probably make an infinite starting from casting a monoblack creature and drawing a card via The Great Henge. We can switch them all out though; Clackbridge Troll can be replaced by Pursued Whale, Duskfang Mentor can be replaced with Sporeweb Weaver, and Skemfar Avenger can be replaced by Beledros Witherbloom. Woe Strider needs to be dropped anyway.
If we go with Omen of the Sun, then we can add a Plains; we only need to replace Planar Ally with Trimuphant Adventurer. Heliod's Intervention can be replaced by Mythos of Nethroi.
We may also need a cheaper base of mana, so we could go with Palladium Myr and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.
Of course, the big question (or the one I see right now; you guys will probably point out other problems with this) is if we have enough resources to get started. We do have the ability to chain up to 4 Genesis Ultimatums, casting them as many as 10 times. So I figure we can probably get started, but we will need to look at the start carefully.
As before, a non-haste start and combo would greatly help, as we could go from Primal Might into Circle of Dreams Druid into Kenrith, the Returned into Orb of Dragonkind. But, I still don't have a working replacement for Scaled Herbalist, and as jfb points out, the start looks to be very difficult as well.
So, what do you guys think? Are there any serious problems?
Edit: Actually, I'm making this more complicated than it has to be: the enchantment can just be an aura, like we're doing with Arachnoform.
Best I can think of is after your start, play kinnan with one treasure, tap a treasure for UU and use to mutate octo + kinnan up skemfar, another 2 treasures for RRUU to vadrok up aracnoform and make a lot of kinnans + a few skemfars, use them to draw a few cards, then use 2 treasures for lots of U and R and continue as before. 6 treasures total.
The potential changes seem interesting, haven't checked them thoroughly. Bit nervous about making such big changes so close to the deadline though.
Another potential idea I've just had: Could we somehow use Aegar, the freezing flame to convert the output of the damage stage into input of the blue stage? If so that would free up life as an additional resource for later layers.
Something that life could be used for is that earlier there was an idea to use Orvar as the main copy engine instead of brooms, which would allow Avalanche caller to make a bunch of tapped snow lands for Beladros witherbloom to untap.
Oh, damn, just realised there's a problem in the current deck as well: Orb of dragonkind can produce extra mana doe to Kinnan, and that extra mana doesn't have the restriction of being only usable on dragons.
Oh oof, bad news on Orb of Dragonkind, but good for catching it! The obvious fix is to remove the Orb of Dragonkind / Heliod's Intervention part of the combo, losing us 2 layers.
One potential fix is the new idea I just mentioned above. That appears to get 9 layers, so it's 3 layers better than our current deck. But yeah, needs to be checked carefully.
It looks the The Great Henge, if we can make it work, can actually free up life for the later layers. We can't cheaply destroy creatures to draw cards, but we can with Toralf, God of Fury. Also, after destroying them, we can delay the playing of them to get the Island set up for drawing, so I think that can successfully build up the stage.
However, I'm not immediately seeing an improvement due to having life available. Unfortunately, The Great Henge gives us life, so we can't put life stages after it if we put it first. We could use tapped lands instead, and use Beledros Witherbloom to untap for green mana; we could then follow with Erebos's or Heliod's Intevention, but I don't know how to link those to anything other than Treasure after that. Strangely, there is an X life gain spell for black, but not for green!
If the The Great Henge plan doesn't work, we can still use Primal Might, and just hook it directly into treasures, gaining us one layer. This would require switching out Circle of Dreams Druid for something else (I guess Palladium Myr, Ardent Electromancer, and Birgi, God of Storytelling are all possibilities?), but I think we can make it work.
Edit: So, I've been trying to get an infinite combo by using a cheap creature that we can bounce back to our hand and recast (with an empty stack) to get a card draw, and I haven't been able to get one. This doesn't necessarily mean anything of course. The problems I've been having: we need to draw both the Island and the Octopus to loop, and we only get one draw by playing a creature. If we try to bounce the Octopus instead, then we have to bounce the cheap creature, the Octopus, and sometimes the creature Arachnoform is enchanting in order to make progress. I suppose we can do this with two copies of Reflections of Littjara. We do need something for Tibalt's Trickery to counter though - okay this is starting to be very complicated.