Minor optimization might be to hit the Mage's attendant instead of Avalanche caller in the start, and then just spend 2 mana to cast avalanche caller when we want to animate the swamp.
Edit: actually no blue is more expensive than white
Edit: got started on the doc Deedlit shared via DMs
So unless we find an improvement to the start that prepares the Jin we can't have the flash emblem ready for the first Thieves' Tools cast. With the 35 treasures we get from the first Tools copy in that case we can still get access to most of our deck after spending 8 of them. But as far as I can tell none of the stages work without flash for Skyclave Shade and Spara's Adjudicators. The best I can find are 4 layers.
- Each of 27 treasure casts Tibalt's Trickery with X counterable spells on the stack. (And gets enough TT copies to counter them)
- Countering 1 of those spells casts Bloody Betrayal, and all copies untap an original creature to get X green mana
- Each green mana casts For the Family on the animated swamp, getting copies for X black mana.
- 3 black mana can cast Vanquish the Weak to double our Orvar, the All-Form count (our refresh the utility creatures as needed)
So I think we get 2^^^^29 treasures from the original Tools once we resolve that.
(There is only one layer from TT because we need flash for Sea Gate Stormcaller to cast it with kicker to get the double copy creation. Using TT to cast it would be too expensive)
There's a lot of overhead costs in this combo, as we start off pretty inefficient with needing a bunch of spells to counter and with a need to get more of our utility creatures fairly often. But we do get much better as the combo goes.
Edit: im close to getting an early frog line to work (though without arlinn) and it seems at least possible to get Jin instead of Orvar from exile 5, but from there its difficult to make nonlegendary Orvars.
Edit: ok so here's my line
TT mills 3
exile 1: invoke
exile 4: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT (+TT)
TT counters TT for lorehold command (haste and draw) TT mills 3
TTS->vorinclex (hasty)+ avalanche caller (no haste)
tap non xorns for GGG
spend 2 for adjudicators on xorn, tap xorn for U
GU floating
Exile 5: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT+bloody betrayal
Betrayal makes U through Xorn
TT counters TTS for Jin cast double major to make a nonlegendary copy
TTS gets mind sorcerer, returning double major
exile 6: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT+bloody betrayal+croaking counterpart (+2 jin copies of CC)
CC makes 2 frog-Jins
bloody betrayal make a G
TT makes Orvar, cast double major get Jin copies, -> orvar+3 friends
TTS -> mage's attendant or something
...
But from here we are at basically no resources need a bit more to actually combo off,
(also, very minor note: we need to counter all of our Vanquish the weaks as first day of class and Arlinn and Sigarda's summons push all of our fresh creatures too big so we can't be killing off the small number we made in the setup, so its at least 4 mana per doubling once we are in the main combo)
So, the write-up has languished for a while - which is a little worrying, since Standard rotates next month, and we would like to get the write-up published before then.
Of course, this is as much my fault as anyone; FortyTwo is the only one who has contributed so far to the doc. And, as I write this I am going on vacation soon. But, hopefully I can really go at this when I get back.
Yeah and I haven't touched it in months... I just haven't been as into magic lately. Unfinity getting pushed again and some unbalanced/unfun limited formats (This entire standard has like 2 good sets to draft...) just means I haven't been playing as much. Dominaria has been great the last few times we went back though so fingers crossed.
I did start a bit of an alternate explanation for the Torvald stage to maybe use in a writeup of that 10-card list, that is maybe better but doesn't really fit into what we have.
Ok with spoilers starting up, and life obligations winding down I should have time to work on the writeup. We have like two weeks before rotation so this will be my priority. I don't see any obvious optimizations from the last list and it seems like the new tech from the least card challenge unfortunately doesn't quite help, though I'm weak at spotting ending layer chains so there might be an optimization there.
I'm pretty sure that these stages in this order is optimal. The start is pretty awkward though and seems like there should be improvements on the first line in post #99, but everything has run into dead ends.
Thanks FortyTwo! I will try to contribute as well.
CaptainMarcia, plopfill, hyp_cos: if any of you want to take a look at our latest deck, and point out any problems that you see or improvements that can be made, that would be most welcome!
Ok with spoilers starting up, and life obligations winding down I should have time to work on the writeup. We have like two weeks before rotation so this will be my priority. I don't see any obvious optimizations from the last list and it seems like the new tech from the least card challenge unfortunately doesn't quite help, though I'm weak at spotting ending layer chains so there might be an optimization there.
I'm pretty sure that these stages in this order is optimal. The start is pretty awkward though and seems like there should be improvements on the first line in post #99, but everything has run into dead ends.
Unfortunately Storm the Festival would go infinite, since we could almost certainly still get started without exiling it, even if that is a bit slower. Then it can be used to move the Plains from the library to the battlefield while only costing green mana. We need that zone change to cost at least white. (For the W-Stage we get the Plains out of the library by targeting Path to the World Tree with Thraben Exorcism)
Yeah we can exile one of the layer spells like meeting of the five, and save storm the festival to go infinite with. Taking all of the other instants and sorceries out doesn't work as we'd still be able to even cannibalize the Bury in books and contact other plane from the U stage.
The inefficiency in the opening is that we need to make 1/1 frog-gitaxias and 1/1 frog-Orvar before activating Arlinn, so that they are targetable by the Vanquish the weak after we get Sigarda's Summons (lorehold command pumps the original orvar out of range, and we need to be careful with other creatures we want to copy too like mage's attendant)
Yeah we can exile one of the layer spells like meeting of the five, and save storm the festival to go infinite with. Taking all of the other instants and sorceries out doesn't work as we'd still be able to even cannibalize the Bury in books and contact other plane from the U stage.
The inefficiency in the opening is that we need to make 1/1 frog-gitaxias and 1/1 frog-Orvar before activating Arlinn, so that they are targetable by the Vanquish the weak after we get Sigarda's Summons (lorehold command pumps the original orvar out of range, and we need to be careful with other creatures we want to copy too like mage's attendant)
Wait, how do we make a frog-Orvar? Croaking Counterpart can't target creatures that are already frogs, and Orvar has changeling.
Hmm, the purpose of Croaking Counterpart is to be able to target creatures with Vanquish the Weak; this isn't needed for Orvar since it has power 3, so I think we are fine?
Edit: Oh whoops, just read FortyTwo's point about that. I guess we have to retool the start to avoid Lorehold Command?
First Day of Class also pumps creatures' powers, so we need another way to give haste I suppose.
The start should get us to a point where we have thousands of Treasure and Blood tokens, without having any of those "+1/+1 on enter" effects active yet. At that point we can easily Bury in Books the original Orvar and replay it again to get an unbuffed version. We should set up weak copies of everything we want to target with Vanquish the Weak there and then just keep those copies around.
I think technically we could also operate the combo with only Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant and Aberrant Mind Sorcerer under 3 power. Copies of everything else could be generated frequently enough with the Archery part of Choose Your Weapon during the G-stage. But that would complicate the explanation for very little gain.
So if I'm reading the start right, casting Thieves' Tools just gets us more than 2^^^^29 treasure tokens, which we can use for the full combo to get more than F_{w4 + 5}(2^^^^29) Orvars, and then using our 18 highest layer things gets us to F_{w4 + 7}^18 (F_{w4 + 5}(2^^^^29)). This translates to Conway chained arrow notation as 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 2^^^^29 -> 6) -> 19 -> 9. Should we use this expanded expression or just stick with 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 19 -> 9?
Oh right good point on Orvar, I'm clearly a bit rusty.
I was thinking of substituting X in, so something like: "once we are finally fully out of our resources we can kill our opponent by swinging in with our creatures, we wisely only gave them grounded blockers from Slaughter Specialist, so they can't block our fliers and take 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 19 -> 9 damage where X is 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 2^^^^29 -> 6. Doing more damage to them than <insert some absurd comparison> "
So, working on the writeup at the last minute. It would be nice to have a sequence of play to gain white mana in the blue stage, like Iijil does with gaining green mana in the white stage in post #96. Can anyone supply one?
The simple line of play requires some green and black mana, and using Roiling Regrowth and Orvar triggers for Boseiju Reaches Skyward. It's the last one that is troublesome; for the previous ones, we can just keep some black and green mana from the previous white stage I think. But getting Boseiju Reaches Skyward triggers requires spending a white mana, which is what we are trying to build up.
Edit: Stages and Layers sections are written up, working on the Setup section now. But, I'm not sure what the most updated version of the setup is. Can someone type up the best version? (seems like it gets 35 Treasure tokens?)
The best version should be "slightly improved start" in post #99
It gets 35 treasures with a Thieves' Tools on the stack. So that is where we go through the initial layers. Resolving the Thieves' Tools then gives us the treasures we use to set up the 1/1 copies of creatures we need.
We can't use the early Arlinn start found afterwards because it gives us the emblem before we have the opportunity to set up all our 1/1s, and those are not allowed to get +1/+1 counters. Though the technique from #100 to get access to the deck with 8 treasures still works and lets us start on the initial layers with 27 treasures left.
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Minor optimization might be to hit the Mage's attendant instead of Avalanche caller in the start, and then just spend 2 mana to cast avalanche caller when we want to animate the swamp.
Edit: actually no blue is more expensive than white
Edit: got started on the doc Deedlit shared via DMs
So unless we find an improvement to the start that prepares the Jin we can't have the flash emblem ready for the first Thieves' Tools cast. With the 35 treasures we get from the first Tools copy in that case we can still get access to most of our deck after spending 8 of them. But as far as I can tell none of the stages work without flash for Skyclave Shade and Spara's Adjudicators. The best I can find are 4 layers.
- Each of 27 treasure casts Tibalt's Trickery with X counterable spells on the stack. (And gets enough TT copies to counter them)
- Countering 1 of those spells casts Bloody Betrayal, and all copies untap an original creature to get X green mana
- Each green mana casts For the Family on the animated swamp, getting copies for X black mana.
- 3 black mana can cast Vanquish the Weak to double our Orvar, the All-Form count (our refresh the utility creatures as needed)
So I think we get 2^^^^29 treasures from the original Tools once we resolve that.
(There is only one layer from TT because we need flash for Sea Gate Stormcaller to cast it with kicker to get the double copy creation. Using TT to cast it would be too expensive)
There's a lot of overhead costs in this combo, as we start off pretty inefficient with needing a bunch of spells to counter and with a need to get more of our utility creatures fairly often. But we do get much better as the combo goes.
Edit: im close to getting an early frog line to work (though without arlinn) and it seems at least possible to get Jin instead of Orvar from exile 5, but from there its difficult to make nonlegendary Orvars.
Edit: ok so here's my line
TT mills 3
exile 1: invoke
exile 2: invoke+TTS
TTS->Ashaya
exile 3: invoke+TTS+TTS
2xTTS->Xorn + Sea gate (note: TTS gives +1/+1 counters)
exile 4: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT (+TT)
TT counters TT for lorehold command (haste and draw) TT mills 3
TTS->vorinclex (hasty)+ avalanche caller (no haste)
tap non xorns for GGG
spend 2 for adjudicators on xorn, tap xorn for U
GU floating
Exile 5: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT+bloody betrayal
Betrayal makes U through Xorn
TT counters TTS for Jin cast double major to make a nonlegendary copy
TTS gets mind sorcerer, returning double major
exile 6: invoke+TTS+TTS+TT+bloody betrayal+croaking counterpart (+2 jin copies of CC)
CC makes 2 frog-Jins
bloody betrayal make a G
TT makes Orvar, cast double major get Jin copies, -> orvar+3 friends
TTS -> mage's attendant or something
...
But from here we are at basically no resources need a bit more to actually combo off,
(also, very minor note: we need to counter all of our Vanquish the weaks as first day of class and Arlinn and Sigarda's summons push all of our fresh creatures too big so we can't be killing off the small number we made in the setup, so its at least 4 mana per doubling once we are in the main combo)
Of course, this is as much my fault as anyone; FortyTwo is the only one who has contributed so far to the doc. And, as I write this I am going on vacation soon. But, hopefully I can really go at this when I get back.
I did start a bit of an alternate explanation for the Torvald stage to maybe use in a writeup of that 10-card list, that is maybe better but doesn't really fit into what we have.
I'm pretty sure that these stages in this order is optimal. The start is pretty awkward though and seems like there should be improvements on the first line in post #99, but everything has run into dead ends.
CaptainMarcia, plopfill, hyp_cos: if any of you want to take a look at our latest deck, and point out any problems that you see or improvements that can be made, that would be most welcome!
The inefficiency in the opening is that we need to make 1/1 frog-gitaxias and 1/1 frog-Orvar before activating Arlinn, so that they are targetable by the Vanquish the weak after we get Sigarda's Summons (lorehold command pumps the original orvar out of range, and we need to be careful with other creatures we want to copy too like mage's attendant)
Edit: Oh whoops, just read FortyTwo's point about that. I guess we have to retool the start to avoid Lorehold Command?
First Day of Class also pumps creatures' powers, so we need another way to give haste I suppose.
Edit: Or more simply, don't target Orvar with Vanquish the Weak. We can still target it with Choose Your Weapon, so that should be fine.
I think technically we could also operate the combo with only Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant and Aberrant Mind Sorcerer under 3 power. Copies of everything else could be generated frequently enough with the Archery part of Choose Your Weapon during the G-stage. But that would complicate the explanation for very little gain.
I was thinking of substituting X in, so something like: "once we are finally fully out of our resources we can kill our opponent by swinging in with our creatures, we wisely only gave them grounded blockers from Slaughter Specialist, so they can't block our fliers and take 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 19 -> 9 damage where X is 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 2^^^^29 -> 6. Doing more damage to them than <insert some absurd comparison> "
1 Shatterskull Smashing
2 Goldhound
3 For the Family
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Wizard's Spellbook
6 Invoke the Winds
7 Turntimber Symbiosis
8 Turntimber Symbiosis
9 Lorehold Command
10 Bloody Betrayal
Support
11 Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
12 Sigarda's Summons
13 Double Major
14 Croaking Counterpart
15 Aberrant Mind Sorcerer
16 Mage's Attendant
17 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
18 Orvar, the All-Form
19 Choose Your Weapon
20 Vanquish the Weak
21 Skyclave Shade
22 Snow-Covered Swamp
23 Avalanche Caller
24 Sea Gate Stormcaller
25 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
W stage
26 Plains
27 Thraben Exorcism
28 Path to the World Tree
29 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
30 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
31 Scaled Herbalist
32 Roiling Regrowth
U stage
33 Spara's Adjudicators
34 Secluded Courtyard
35 Brightclimb Pathway
36 Bury in Books
37 Behold the Multiverse
38 Toralf, God of Fury
39 Slaughter Specialist
40 Blessed Defiance
41 Novice Occultist
Layers
42 Cabaretti Charm
43 Meeting of the Five
44 Tibalt's Trickery
45 Xorn
46 Thieves' Tools
47 Lithoform Engine
48 Spectral Steel
49 Valakut Awakening
Extra exilable spells
1 For the Family
1 First Day of Class
3 Bloody Betrayal
4 Lorehold Command
2 Snow Days
resulting in more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 2^^^^29 -> 6) -> 19 -> 9 damage.
The simple line of play requires some green and black mana, and using Roiling Regrowth and Orvar triggers for Boseiju Reaches Skyward. It's the last one that is troublesome; for the previous ones, we can just keep some black and green mana from the previous white stage I think. But getting Boseiju Reaches Skyward triggers requires spending a white mana, which is what we are trying to build up.
Edit: Stages and Layers sections are written up, working on the Setup section now. But, I'm not sure what the most updated version of the setup is. Can someone type up the best version? (seems like it gets 35 Treasure tokens?)
It gets 35 treasures with a Thieves' Tools on the stack. So that is where we go through the initial layers. Resolving the Thieves' Tools then gives us the treasures we use to set up the 1/1 copies of creatures we need.
We can't use the early Arlinn start found afterwards because it gives us the emblem before we have the opportunity to set up all our 1/1s, and those are not allowed to get +1/+1 counters. Though the technique from #100 to get access to the deck with 8 treasures still works and lets us start on the initial layers with 27 treasures left.