With 7/8 standard sets released, it's time to take another crack at this.
So, as a refresher, here are the rules, as stated on Stakfish's webpage:
The Rules of the Game
I’ve taken the liberty of adapting the rules from the original vintage challenge to this one. I’ve relaxed them in some places to allow for the limited cardpool, but for the most part I’ve left them as-is.
-Start with a Standard-legal deck of exactly 60 cards. No less, of course, and if we allowed more, you could deal arbitrary but finite damage by including as many copies of Rat Colony as you feel like, and it wouldn’t break the other rules.
-Conditions caused by randomness can resolve any way you like. In this deck, that mostly means that every single card draw is a Demonic Tutor in disguise: you can assume that the order of your deck is exactly what you want it to be. This veers pretty heavily into magical christmasland, but if we didn’t do it this way you’d have to figure out the average amount of damage a deck could deal, which is probably impossible.
-The opponent is a goldfish with a deck of 60 random basic lands. However, they are still playing to stop you: if you give your opponent a choice, they will pick whichever one is worse for you. The only exception is that they won’t concede the game. This is a sadistic goldfish that wants to make you play it out.
-No going infinite. Infinite really means “arbitrary” in magic, most of the time, so we define it like this: when you make your deck, I pick a finite number, say, a million, or Graham’s Number, or four. If, no matter what number I pick, there’s a line your deck can take that will deal at least that much damage, your deck goes infinite and is disqualified.
-This doesn’t matter to our deck, but other rules of magic apply: if I put 80,000,000 copies of Shock on the stack and target my opponent with each one, they’ll die on the tenth one, and I’ll have dealt only 20 damage. In practice, that means you’re either winning with a giant X-spell or by attacking with a lot of very big creatures.
-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.
There are a few caveats and corner cases requiring some clarification in those rules:
1.Standard legal means that bans matter. Past Standards have not had any hugely impactful bans for this challenge (maybe lucky clover). Also, Standard means the printed cards, not the alchemy changes and exclusive cards on MTGA.
2.Even though lessons could make sideboards relevant, we do not get a sideboard.
3.Since we control randomness and our opponent’s deck is “random” basic lands, we actually get to specify that they are all islands or plains or whatever. This is useful to avoid possibly going infinite if our opponent had, say, a mountain we could somehow steal and go infinite with.
4.The deck must be finite for all lines in the time limit, it doesn’t matter if the deck can go infinite on a later turn, as that turn doesn’t happen.
5.Our opponent will cooperate with any infinites, while opposing us otherwise. As from their perspective, cooperating leads to the deck’s disqualification giving it a terrible score. This makes any way to give our opponent any meaningful choices doubly dangerous now.
6.Speaking of scoring, the final score is: -1 * our opponent’s life total at the end of the game. It does not matter how they got there, only the net total matters.
7.Finally, there is some discretion as to whether a slower deck that does more damage is preferred over a faster deck that does much less. In general, we have passed up turn 1 shock pass for large amounts on turn 2-3 this should be obvious, and there hasn’t been much conflict over this point, but if it does come up, we can make a judgement then.
For those who are new to the challenge, here are the writeups of the past standard decks:
Panharmonicon here– Good explanation of how a ‘stage’ is constructed
Alternating Nova Stage here - has a full example of a stage with the scaling kept constant.
Three stage deck: here - explains the different known 'types' of stages
Last Year's unfinished (sorry) writeup: here - two stages in 2 turns
Additionally, there are (very) old Vintage writeups here
And an incomplete, but more current (though still outdated) one here - Has the TM explanation in it which is still relevant for vintage
Also recommended is some reading of the large number notation we will probably need to use for this deck. Specifically Conway Arrow Notation, and Chained Arrow Notation.
We have a lot of terrible losses to rotation this year (RIP Thaumabroom), but do get some very nice tricks from the new sets.
And we probably get to keep a stage from Toralf, God of Fury if we have any use for damage.
Random changes to cards could break the deck at any time; and they appear to be relatively frequent and numerous.
Additionally, arena exclusivity would mean the combo wouldn't actually be possible in any real game (which previous decks technically are) due to arena having limits on the number of counters and tokens you can have.
Hmm, it seems not that difficult to recompile are two stages from last year's standard. Toralf, God of Fury can easily make for a stage, if we can do something with damage (obvious choice is to give one or more Toralfs lifelink, and turn that into card draw with something like Plumb the Forbidden).
Then for the first stage, we still have Arcane Investigtor and Farideh, Devil's Chosen to turn a blue into lots of card draws. The other half of the stage could then be shuffling cards from our graveyard into our library, via Quandrix Command. Previously, we used a blue mana to mutate Sea Dasher Octopus onto a Vadrok. But, perhaps we can just draw it, and use a blue and a green mana to cast it directly. By using the first and the last modes, we can target an arbitrary creature, thus triggering all the Orvar, the All-Forms that we have in play. So we then get lots of copies of whatever creatuer we want, including possibly Orvars, while also being able to reshuffle three cards from our graveyard into our library. To retrieve our blue mana, we can still use Roiling Regrowth and Scaled Herbalist.
So, that looks like two stages to me. Anyone see any potential problems?
Yeah agreed about Alchemy, I hadn't considered the arena token limits, but that should put any alchemy deck behind a standard deck in damage.
I had thought that the additional card pool might let us do more, as being able to permanently modify cards as well as the ability to create real cards could open up some combo space (like activating Wizard's Spell book many times).
I'm a bit concerned about getting started efficiently, we sill have tibalt's trickery into Wizard's Spellbook (casting like brilliant restoration), but it looks like we don't have any 0 mana plays to easily counter on turn 2?
Hmmm, yeah that's too bad, I don't see a way around it at the moment. Still, turn 3 is pretty good. Tibalt's Trickery is really good, I'm not sure that we are likely to find another way to get a turn 2 start. (but you never know)
Should hopefully get up to around 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 6) -> 6, where X is what we can generate before the first combat phase.
The start is not finished yet - I was thinking we could imprint Invoke the Winds on Wizard's Spellbook, allowing us to imprint more and more instants/sorceries and cast them all every time. It certainly seems like we should be able to get started that way.
To maximize the value of X, I was thinking of Culmination of Studies, along with a bunch of lands. Each land we exile allows us to create a bunch of Treasure tokens, so we can get X to be about 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 4, where Y is a little more than the number of lands we can exile.
Ah, good ideas. Yeah Mirror Box is definitely easier to use!
In terms of getting more layers, it would be nice to cast Disenchant via Tibalt's Trickery to use red mana, then perhaps use The Bloodsky Massacre to generate red mana, if we have something to add lore counters. But, I didn't see anything better than Satsuki, the Living Lore. We could perhaps use Satsuki, by following it up with something to give the Satsukis haste. But, currently we are using Scaled Herbalist to put lands onto the battlefield, and that needs haste.
Oh wait, Quandrix Cultivator might work as a replacement! Okay, maybe this can work then.
Also, we can replacer Akoum Warrior with just a Mountain, allowing for another land to be exiled.
Two more exilable lands gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 29 -> 8) -> 10 -> 10 damage.
Edit: Ooh, I think I've come up with a nice green mana stage!
So, the green mana stage has alternating layers using two instants, Crushing Canopy and Massive Might. We use Crushing Canopy to target an enchantment, namely Harald Unites the Elves, which gets many copies thanks to copies of Orvar, the All-Form. Each time we can return an Elf to the battlefield, which can tap for green mana thanks to Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, and some card which gives haste. Then, Massive Might can target creatures, namely Graf Reaver, which allows us to sacrifice a creature when it enters the battlefield, and Ardent Elementalist, which allows us to return our instants back to our hand. So I think that's a green mana stage.
Some alternate constructions: We could get rid of Massive Might and use the other mode of Crushing Canopy, if we give our creatures flying using Hallowed Haunting. Also, instead of bringing back in Elf, we could make all our creatures into Elves via Maskwood Nexus, and use Ashaya Soul of the Warden for the green mana, and put it in the graveyard by targeting it to create a token copy.
Oh, but we have trouble getting colorless mana for our Crushing Canopy. So perhaps we can switch to both modes of Crushing Canopy, and get 3 green mana each time.
Hmm, looks like there is a problem. When we use Crushing Canopy to target a creature, we have to target Graf Reaver, in order to get the green mana back that we spent to cast Crushing Canopy. But then we have no opportunities to target other creatures like Ardent Elementalist.
One solution would be to be able to make copies of Crushing Canopy, so that we can use some copies to destroy our Elves, while also being able to target whatever creature for copies. I suppose the easiest would be to use Plummet for our creature targeting, and have Sea Gate Stormcaller copy it. I think we need two Plummets? So that we can cast one to target something other than Ardent Elementalist, then the second can target Ardent Elementalist and get our spells back. (I was wondering if maybe we can get away with one, by resolving down to the next Ardent Elementalist trigger after every instant. Actually, I think that works?)
Edit: Hmm, the line is actually rather tricky at the moment. We need to resolve copies of Ardent Elementalist to retrieve our instants, and we need to resolve copies of Sea Gate Stormcaller to get copies of our next instant that we cast. So it's a bit of a struggle juggling the different ETBs that we need, I haven't quite figured it out yet.
Edit: Okay, I think I've figured it out. We want two Crushing Canopys and two Plummets. We start by casting a Plummet with some delayed triggers of Sea Gate Stormcaller. We target SGS with the original Plummet, creating a bunch of triggers to create SGS tokens, and resolve one. We also resolve one of the Plummet copies to destroy an Elf. We next cast Crushing Canopy, getting a bunch of triggers to create a Harald Unites the Elves token, and resolve one to bring back the Elf, allowing us to generate a green mana. We cast Plummet again, this time targeting Ardent Elementalist, and get a copy, which we can use to destroy an Elf. The Ardent Elementalist tokens coming into play will allow us to return our two Plummets and our Crushing Canopy back to our hand. We resolve back down, eventually resolving an SGS trigger from the bottom layer. We recast Crushing Canopy. Then we recast Plummet, only this time we target a Sea Gate Stormcaller. We again use the copy to destroy an Elf, and cast the second Crushing Canopy, resolving a trigger for HUtE. Then we cast our second Plummet, and go back to targeting Ardent Elementalist, getting a copy again from our previous Plummet targeting SGS. We retrieve our two Plummets and two Crushing Canopies. So we're done a loop, except we've added a couple of layers, at the cost of a green mana. We can keep doing this to build up our stage.
At the very top of the stage, after we've cast Plummet to make copies of Ardent Elementalist, and resolved some triggers to retrieve our instants, we can resolve down to the next lower Plummet and get an SGS trigger. Then we recast Crushing Canopy and Plummet, and this time we can target whatever we want, be it Orvar, Toralf, or Crawling Barrens. Then we resolve back down, get another SGS trigger, and cast Crushing Canopy and Plummet again, this time targeting Ardent Elementalist to retrieve our instants. So I think this all works out.
Hmm, that seems more awkward than it probably needs to be. My initial thought is to make targeting less restrictive with like tamiyo's safekeeping, but that seems easy to go infinite with, same with Return to nature being a cheaper way to target enchantments but it also targets artifacts...
Oh, we have to watch out for being able to target artifacts, we can target a Treasure token and make copies of it. So Raze the Effigy is no good. Taking it out, and just using Light the Way to generate the red for Hobgoblin Bandit Lord, loses us a layer, down to 6.
Edit: Looked for a way to restore the use of Orb of Dragonkind, but the only thing I could think of was using something that sacrificed an artifact rather than targeted it. But, sacrificing an artifact would be part of the cost of the spell, and wouldn't carry over to the copies, so we wouldn't get an additional layer. We might still get a layer, if we could get copies when we put Orb of Dragonkind into play. But I didn't see anything that does that.
Edit: I didn't find a way to restore the artifact layer, but I think we can get another layer by casting another Tibalt's Trickery to cast Cleansing Wildfire many times. That hopefully gets us back up to 7 layers.
I still think the green stage could be smaller, but this is looking really good for still missing a set.
I think I'm missing how we are getting the original plummet and canopy off of the stack to be returned with the elementalist. (can we give the opponent a colossal skyturtle to use the ward trigger as a poor cephalid shrine?) Or is it shenanigans with tibalt's trickery?
I think the start need a bit more help too, especially if we don't want the spellbook to eat trickery, as we need a bit of mana to use the cards in hand and the only rituals spellbook can cast are Culling ritual and open the omenpaths. Maybe Storm the Festival is enough?
Though optimizing the start is likely wasted effort if the next set has a 0 mana play.
Edit: Yeah, there's a problem - to counter the original spell, we need to target the warded permanent with the original spell. But then, we only get copies of that warded permanent, not the permanents we want to copy. I don't know how to fix this.
The counterspells all use blue, so that doesn't help the green stage. Give the opponent copies of Jin-Gitaxias? Maybe that could work, but that's another thing that we need to copy. It seems difficult.
Hmm - there's Defend the Celestus but that has a couple of problems: it doesn't destroy our Elf, and it costs two green mana. Inscryption of Ambundance can target two for two mana, but it has the same problems again.
I suppose it's not entirely necessary for us to target Colossal Skyturtle every time; near the top, we can also resolve the spells we cast to put them in the graveyard. So for instance we shouldn't have trouble with making copies of Orvar or Crawling Barrens. But lower down, with Crushing Canopy the targeting of the Skyturtle will compete with the targeting of Harald Unites the Elves, and for Plummet the Skyturtle will compete with Ardent Elementalist and Sea Gate Stormcaller. Maybe there's some shenanigans again involving going up and down the stack, but I don't see it at the moment.
Would Duel for Dominance help? The original targets the opponents ward creature to get countered and one of our creatures to create copies. Copies can make our elf fight one of the opponents creatures and die. We just need to make sure the repeated fights don't wittle down the opponents creatures with all the fights, so maybe give them something indestructible.
P = SGS trigger to create a copy of plummet and kill an elf
E = Ogvar trigger to create a saga and return an elf
S = Ogvar trigger to create a SGS and make casting plummet produce P
O = Ogvar trigger to create a Overcharged Amalgam
A = Ogvar trigger to create a Ardent Elementalist
have 3 Plummets and 2 Crushing Canopies in hand + 1 Plummet and 2 Crushing Canopies in graveyard or on stack and be ready to create SGS copies of spells.
(gggg - )
cast Plummet, target SGS
(ggg - SP...SPSPSPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SPSPSP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPSPSPEE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPSPE)
cast Plummet, targeting Amalgam
(gg - SP...SPSPSPEO...OP)
resolve P to kill elf and Os to counter all Plummets and Crushing Canopies on the stack
(gg - SP...SPSPSPE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SPSP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPSPEE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPE)
cast Plummet, targeting Amalgam
(gg - SP...SPSPEAP)
resolve P to kill elf and A to return all Plummets and Crushing Canopys to hand
(gg - SP...SPSPE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPE...EE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPE...E)
We are in the situation from the start with one less g but 2 more layers.
We can exile 19 instants/sorceries to get 19 more activations of Wizard's Spellbook, allowing us to target a Treasure token 19 times to get many copies.
This hopefully gets us to more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 20 -> 6) -> 7) -> 7 damage.
I think it doesn't need to be quite so complicated as Overcharged amalgam can sacrifice the elf to the exploit trigger.
Also fight spells like duel for dominance (or blizzard brawl if we want access to indestructability), are another source of damage for the Toralf stage so we might need to rethink things there a little.
It would be nice to be able to subtract copies of Plummet and Crushing Canopy, but I'm not sure yet how to simplify the procedure using Exploit.
Edit: Oh, I guess there's no need to target Sea Gate Stormcaller, since we don't need the copies to destroy the Elf. So we alternate between targeting Ardent Elementalist and Overcharged Amalgam, so we only need two of each, and no Sea Gate Stormcaller.
So this gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 24 -> 6) -> 7) -> 7 damage, if all goes according to plan.
Edit: Oh no, with this method we don't kill off an Elf when we're copying Ardent Elementalist. So yeah, we do want to copy Sea Gate Stormcaller, so I guess we go back to Iijil's plan with 4 of each instant.
Edit: Oh haha, we can't use red spells to create red mana lands! In my defense, this waa a carryover from when we had Orb of Dragonkind, which couldn't be used on instants/sorceries. But if we don't have the Orb, we can't double up on red mana.
The best I can think of at the moment is to use Tibalt's Trickery to cast Kazuul's Fury. Unfortunately, we can't sacrifice a different creature for the copies, so it's only worth one layer. So, we drop to 6 layers.
Edit: We can use Markov Retribution instead of Kazuul's Fury, and the life gain will increase with each copy. So that takes us back up to 7 layers.
In the u stage we can recast instants and get copies for them easily. There are mana blue instants that draw a card and can replace Farideh, Devil's Chosen. Eureka Moment replaces Scaled Herbalist at the same time, so it saves a card. It would also replace Arcane Investigator, but we still need 1 random elf for the green stage.
I came across that while trying to get Shattered Seraph or another card from that cycle to work as a fourth stage. We should have many untapped lands available, so the ability reminds me of Elvish Spirit Guide, which seems like a promising building block for a stage. I didn't get there but thought I'd share anyway, maybe one of you can get this further.
To get Rakish Revelers out of exile we need to cast it. To do that at instant speed during the combo we can include Arlinn, the Pack's Hope and use the +1 ability. But casting that creature costs the colored mana that we just got from the land by exiling it, so that alone seems pretty useless. There is no way to get multiple copies of "casting it" to use getting it out of exile as part of the stage.
Open the Omenpaths seemed promising, each copy allowing us to cast Masked Bandits once. But we don't need to cast them immediately, so this would go infinite if we add more pieces to build a working stage.
Using Secluded Courtyard and putting the new stage below the old blue stage would let us cast Spara's Adjudicators from exile freely. But at that point there are no other zone changes left that we could make cost a white.
So the plan would be to make the blue stage narrower, preferably only moving lands out of the graveyard and back to the battlefield. But I didn't find the necessary cards. Storyweave + Boseiju Reaches Skyward would be a narrow way to get lands out of the graveyard, but green is already used by Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, and there is little hope of changing the color of that stage.
Alternatively we find another way to cast the exiled creature and try to put the new stage above the blue stage. Then we'd need instants that move creatures between zones while leaving lands alone.
That's as far as I got. Any ideas?
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So, as a refresher, here are the rules, as stated on Stakfish's webpage:
There are a few caveats and corner cases requiring some clarification in those rules:
1.Standard legal means that bans matter. Past Standards have not had any hugely impactful bans for this challenge (maybe lucky clover). Also, Standard means the printed cards, not the alchemy changes and exclusive cards on MTGA.
2.Even though lessons could make sideboards relevant, we do not get a sideboard.
3.Since we control randomness and our opponent’s deck is “random” basic lands, we actually get to specify that they are all islands or plains or whatever. This is useful to avoid possibly going infinite if our opponent had, say, a mountain we could somehow steal and go infinite with.
4.The deck must be finite for all lines in the time limit, it doesn’t matter if the deck can go infinite on a later turn, as that turn doesn’t happen.
5.Our opponent will cooperate with any infinites, while opposing us otherwise. As from their perspective, cooperating leads to the deck’s disqualification giving it a terrible score. This makes any way to give our opponent any meaningful choices doubly dangerous now.
6.Speaking of scoring, the final score is: -1 * our opponent’s life total at the end of the game. It does not matter how they got there, only the net total matters.
7.Finally, there is some discretion as to whether a slower deck that does more damage is preferred over a faster deck that does much less. In general, we have passed up turn 1 shock pass for large amounts on turn 2-3 this should be obvious, and there hasn’t been much conflict over this point, but if it does come up, we can make a judgement then.
For those who are new to the challenge, here are the writeups of the past standard decks:
Panharmonicon here– Good explanation of how a ‘stage’ is constructed
Alternating Nova Stage here - has a full example of a stage with the scaling kept constant.
Three stage deck: here - explains the different known 'types' of stages
Last Year's unfinished (sorry) writeup: here - two stages in 2 turns
Additionally, there are (very) old Vintage writeups here
And an incomplete, but more current (though still outdated) one here - Has the TM explanation in it which is still relevant for vintage
Also recommended is some reading of the large number notation we will probably need to use for this deck. Specifically Conway Arrow Notation, and Chained Arrow Notation.
We have a lot of terrible losses to rotation this year (RIP Thaumabroom), but do get some very nice tricks from the new sets.
And we probably get to keep a stage from Toralf, God of Fury if we have any use for damage.
But yeah, if things are changed with patches that might be annoying.
Additionally, arena exclusivity would mean the combo wouldn't actually be possible in any real game (which previous decks technically are) due to arena having limits on the number of counters and tokens you can have.
Hmm, it seems not that difficult to recompile are two stages from last year's standard. Toralf, God of Fury can easily make for a stage, if we can do something with damage (obvious choice is to give one or more Toralfs lifelink, and turn that into card draw with something like Plumb the Forbidden).
Then for the first stage, we still have Arcane Investigtor and Farideh, Devil's Chosen to turn a blue into lots of card draws. The other half of the stage could then be shuffling cards from our graveyard into our library, via Quandrix Command. Previously, we used a blue mana to mutate Sea Dasher Octopus onto a Vadrok. But, perhaps we can just draw it, and use a blue and a green mana to cast it directly. By using the first and the last modes, we can target an arbitrary creature, thus triggering all the Orvar, the All-Forms that we have in play. So we then get lots of copies of whatever creatuer we want, including possibly Orvars, while also being able to reshuffle three cards from our graveyard into our library. To retrieve our blue mana, we can still use Roiling Regrowth and Scaled Herbalist.
So, that looks like two stages to me. Anyone see any potential problems?
I had thought that the additional card pool might let us do more, as being able to permanently modify cards as well as the ability to create real cards could open up some combo space (like activating Wizard's Spell book many times).
I'm a bit concerned about getting started efficiently, we sill have tibalt's trickery into Wizard's Spellbook (casting like brilliant restoration), but it looks like we don't have any 0 mana plays to easily counter on turn 2?
Edit: Preliminary start.
1 Akoum Warrior
2 land
3 Tibalt's Trickery
4 spell with mana value 1
5 Wizard's Spellbook
U stage
6 Quandrix Command
7 Quandrix Command
8 Roiling Regrowth
9 Scaled Herbalist
10 Island
11 Circle of Dreams Druid
12 Arcane Investigator
13 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
14 Orvar, the All-Form
15 Double Major
16 Toralf, God of Fury
17 Nezumi Prowler
18 Plumb the Forbidden
19 Inscription of Insight
20 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
21 Orb of Dragonkind
22 Arachnoform
23 Disenchant
24 Sea Gate Stormcaller
25 Xorn
26 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
27 Planar Ally
28 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Should hopefully get up to around 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 6) -> 6, where X is what we can generate before the first combat phase.
The start is not finished yet - I was thinking we could imprint Invoke the Winds on Wizard's Spellbook, allowing us to imprint more and more instants/sorceries and cast them all every time. It certainly seems like we should be able to get started that way.
To maximize the value of X, I was thinking of Culmination of Studies, along with a bunch of lands. Each land we exile allows us to create a bunch of Treasure tokens, so we can get X to be about 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 4, where Y is a little more than the number of lands we can exile.
That's a nice idea for the start
trikery countering Otherworldly Gaze mills 3 casts spellbook 5 cards in yard
Invoke the winds 4 cards in yard
invoke the winds + otherworldly gaze 6
invoke the winds + otherworldly gaze + tibalt's trickery 8 +free cast
invoke the winds + otherworldly gaze + tibalt's trickery + X(Harness Infinity?) 10+ another free cast
Seems pretty good to get started.
Mirror Box seems easier to use than Double Major?
In terms of getting more layers, it would be nice to cast Disenchant via Tibalt's Trickery to use red mana, then perhaps use The Bloodsky Massacre to generate red mana, if we have something to add lore counters. But, I didn't see anything better than Satsuki, the Living Lore. We could perhaps use Satsuki, by following it up with something to give the Satsukis haste. But, currently we are using Scaled Herbalist to put lands onto the battlefield, and that needs haste.
Oh wait, Quandrix Cultivator might work as a replacement! Okay, maybe this can work then.
Edit: Okay, how about:
1 Akoum Warrior
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 Otherwordly Gaze
5 Invoke the Winds
6 Harness Infinity
U stage
7 Quandrix Command
8 Quandrix Command
9 Roiling Regrowth
10 Quandrix Cultivator
11 Island
12 Forest
13 Arcane Investigator
14 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
15 Orvar, the All-Form
16 Double Major
17 Toralf, God of Fury
18 Nezumi Prowler
19 Plumb the Forbidden
20 Slaughter Specialist
21 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
22 Orb of Dragonkind
23 Arachnoform
24 Raze the Effigy
25 Sea Gate Stormcaller
26 The Bloodsky Massacre
27 Satsuki, the Living Lore
28 Lorehold Command
29 Teach By Example
30 Xorn
31 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
32 Planar Ally
33 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
26 Forest
Should get us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 27 -> 8) -> 10 -> 10 damage.
I think we need a bit more help getting started, as making initial mana is a bit difficult.
I'm trying to find another stage, but not having much luck.
Also, we can replacer Akoum Warrior with just a Mountain, allowing for another land to be exiled.
Two more exilable lands gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 29 -> 8) -> 10 -> 10 damage.
Edit: Ooh, I think I've come up with a nice green mana stage!
So, the green mana stage has alternating layers using two instants, Crushing Canopy and Massive Might. We use Crushing Canopy to target an enchantment, namely Harald Unites the Elves, which gets many copies thanks to copies of Orvar, the All-Form. Each time we can return an Elf to the battlefield, which can tap for green mana thanks to Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, and some card which gives haste. Then, Massive Might can target creatures, namely Graf Reaver, which allows us to sacrifice a creature when it enters the battlefield, and Ardent Elementalist, which allows us to return our instants back to our hand. So I think that's a green mana stage.
Some alternate constructions: We could get rid of Massive Might and use the other mode of Crushing Canopy, if we give our creatures flying using Hallowed Haunting. Also, instead of bringing back in Elf, we could make all our creatures into Elves via Maskwood Nexus, and use Ashaya Soul of the Warden for the green mana, and put it in the graveyard by targeting it to create a token copy.
Oh, but we have trouble getting colorless mana for our Crushing Canopy. So perhaps we can switch to both modes of Crushing Canopy, and get 3 green mana each time.
I think that leaves us room for a blue stage using Quandrix Commnand and Arcane Investigator.
So, what about:
1 Akoum Warrior
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 Otherwordly Gaze
5 Invoke the Winds
6 Harness Infinity
G stage
7 Crushing Canopy
8 Harald Unites the Elves
9 Orvar, the All-Form
10 Mirror Box
11 Arcane Investigator
12 Skemfar Avenger
13 Skemfar Avenger
14 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
15 Hallowed Haunting
16 Graf Reaver
17 Ardent Elementalist
18 Quandrix Command
19 Roiling Regrowth
20 Scaled Herbalist
21 Island
22 Forest
23 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
Toralf stage
24 Toralf, God of Fury
25 Callous Bloodmage
26 Slaughter Specialist
27 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
28 Orb of Dragonkind
29 Arachnoform
30 Raze the Effigy
31 Primal Adversary
32 Light the Way
33 Sea Gate Stormcaller
34 Xorn
35 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
36 Planar Allay
37 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
22 Forest
So this gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 23 -> 5) -> 7) -> 7 damage, if all goes according to plan.
We can use a crawling barrens for colorless.
and First day of class for haste in a way we don't mind exiling to the spellbook early.
Hmm, looks like there is a problem. When we use Crushing Canopy to target a creature, we have to target Graf Reaver, in order to get the green mana back that we spent to cast Crushing Canopy. But then we have no opportunities to target other creatures like Ardent Elementalist.
One solution would be to be able to make copies of Crushing Canopy, so that we can use some copies to destroy our Elves, while also being able to target whatever creature for copies. I suppose the easiest would be to use Plummet for our creature targeting, and have Sea Gate Stormcaller copy it. I think we need two Plummets? So that we can cast one to target something other than Ardent Elementalist, then the second can target Ardent Elementalist and get our spells back. (I was wondering if maybe we can get away with one, by resolving down to the next Ardent Elementalist trigger after every instant. Actually, I think that works?)
Edit: Hmm, the line is actually rather tricky at the moment. We need to resolve copies of Ardent Elementalist to retrieve our instants, and we need to resolve copies of Sea Gate Stormcaller to get copies of our next instant that we cast. So it's a bit of a struggle juggling the different ETBs that we need, I haven't quite figured it out yet.
Edit: Okay, I think I've figured it out. We want two Crushing Canopys and two Plummets. We start by casting a Plummet with some delayed triggers of Sea Gate Stormcaller. We target SGS with the original Plummet, creating a bunch of triggers to create SGS tokens, and resolve one. We also resolve one of the Plummet copies to destroy an Elf. We next cast Crushing Canopy, getting a bunch of triggers to create a Harald Unites the Elves token, and resolve one to bring back the Elf, allowing us to generate a green mana. We cast Plummet again, this time targeting Ardent Elementalist, and get a copy, which we can use to destroy an Elf. The Ardent Elementalist tokens coming into play will allow us to return our two Plummets and our Crushing Canopy back to our hand. We resolve back down, eventually resolving an SGS trigger from the bottom layer. We recast Crushing Canopy. Then we recast Plummet, only this time we target a Sea Gate Stormcaller. We again use the copy to destroy an Elf, and cast the second Crushing Canopy, resolving a trigger for HUtE. Then we cast our second Plummet, and go back to targeting Ardent Elementalist, getting a copy again from our previous Plummet targeting SGS. We retrieve our two Plummets and two Crushing Canopies. So we're done a loop, except we've added a couple of layers, at the cost of a green mana. We can keep doing this to build up our stage.
At the very top of the stage, after we've cast Plummet to make copies of Ardent Elementalist, and resolved some triggers to retrieve our instants, we can resolve down to the next lower Plummet and get an SGS trigger. Then we recast Crushing Canopy and Plummet, and this time we can target whatever we want, be it Orvar, Toralf, or Crawling Barrens. Then we resolve back down, get another SGS trigger, and cast Crushing Canopy and Plummet again, this time targeting Ardent Elementalist to retrieve our instants. So I think this all works out.
Edit: So, right now we're looking at:
1 Akoum Warrior
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 First Day of Class
5 Invoke the Winds
6 Harness Infinity
G stage
7 Crushing Canopy
8 Crushing Canopy
9 Plummet
10 Plummet
11 Harald Unites the Elves
12 Orvar, the All-Form
13 Mirror Box
14 Arcane Investigator
15 Crawling Barrens
16 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
17 Hallowed Haunting
18 Ardent Elementalist
19 Quandrix Command
20 Roiling Regrowth
21 Scaled Herbalist
22 Island
23 Forest
24 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
Toralf stage
25 Toralf, God of Fury
26 Callous Bloodmage
27 Slaughter Specialist
28 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
29 Orb of Dragonkind
30 Arachnoform
31 Raze the Effigy
32 Primal Adversary
33 Light the Way
34 Sea Gate Stormcaller
35 Xorn
36 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
37 Planar Allay
38 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
21 Forest
So this gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 22 -> 5) -> 7) -> 7 damage, if all goes according to plan.
Edit: Looked for a way to restore the use of Orb of Dragonkind, but the only thing I could think of was using something that sacrificed an artifact rather than targeted it. But, sacrificing an artifact would be part of the cost of the spell, and wouldn't carry over to the copies, so we wouldn't get an additional layer. We might still get a layer, if we could get copies when we put Orb of Dragonkind into play. But I didn't see anything that does that.
Edit: I didn't find a way to restore the artifact layer, but I think we can get another layer by casting another Tibalt's Trickery to cast Cleansing Wildfire many times. That hopefully gets us back up to 7 layers.
I think I'm missing how we are getting the original plummet and canopy off of the stack to be returned with the elementalist. (can we give the opponent a colossal skyturtle to use the ward trigger as a poor cephalid shrine?) Or is it shenanigans with tibalt's trickery?
I think the start need a bit more help too, especially if we don't want the spellbook to eat trickery, as we need a bit of mana to use the cards in hand and the only rituals spellbook can cast are Culling ritual and open the omenpaths. Maybe Storm the Festival is enough?
Though optimizing the start is likely wasted effort if the next set has a 0 mana play.
Donating a warded creature seems like a good idea. So yeah, we could put in Colossal Skyturtle, give the opponent a creature with Inscription of Insight, and exchange that with the turtle using The Trickster God's Heist. Any problems with that?
Edit: Yeah, there's a problem - to counter the original spell, we need to target the warded permanent with the original spell. But then, we only get copies of that warded permanent, not the permanents we want to copy. I don't know how to fix this.
The counterspells all use blue, so that doesn't help the green stage. Give the opponent copies of Jin-Gitaxias? Maybe that could work, but that's another thing that we need to copy. It seems difficult.
Pretty convenient that there's a flying enchantment creature with ward in standard to get hit by the right modes of plummet and crushing canopy.
edit: oh, yeah that is a problem, I guess we'd need things that target multiple permanents? which is pretty scarce in standard right now.
I suppose it's not entirely necessary for us to target Colossal Skyturtle every time; near the top, we can also resolve the spells we cast to put them in the graveyard. So for instance we shouldn't have trouble with making copies of Orvar or Crawling Barrens. But lower down, with Crushing Canopy the targeting of the Skyturtle will compete with the targeting of Harald Unites the Elves, and for Plummet the Skyturtle will compete with Ardent Elementalist and Sea Gate Stormcaller. Maybe there's some shenanigans again involving going up and down the stack, but I don't see it at the moment.
But, we still need to figure out how to proc the first step of Harald Unites the Elves, without losing an instant on the stack.
P = SGS trigger to create a copy of plummet and kill an elf
E = Ogvar trigger to create a saga and return an elf
S = Ogvar trigger to create a SGS and make casting plummet produce P
O = Ogvar trigger to create a Overcharged Amalgam
A = Ogvar trigger to create a Ardent Elementalist
have 3 Plummets and 2 Crushing Canopies in hand + 1 Plummet and 2 Crushing Canopies in graveyard or on stack and be ready to create SGS copies of spells.
(gggg - )
cast Plummet, target SGS
(ggg - SP...SPSPSPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SPSPSP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPSPSPEE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPSPE)
cast Plummet, targeting Amalgam
(gg - SP...SPSPSPEO...OP)
resolve P to kill elf and Os to counter all Plummets and Crushing Canopies on the stack
(gg - SP...SPSPSPE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SPSP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPSPEE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSPE)
cast Plummet, targeting Amalgam
(gg - SP...SPSPEAP)
resolve P to kill elf and A to return all Plummets and Crushing Canopys to hand
(gg - SP...SPSPE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPSP)
resolve P and S to kill elf and get ready to copy spells
(ggg - SP...SP)
cast Crushing Canopy targeting saga
(gg - SP...SPE...EE)
resolve E to return elf and make g
(ggg - SP...SPE...E)
We are in the situation from the start with one less g but 2 more layers.
Can Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant substitute for Sea Gate Stormcaller? I know SGS is useful for bypassing using them on Crushing Canopy, I'm just not sure if there is a way around it.
Assuming not, then we can have:
1 Searstep Pathway
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 First Day of Class
5 Otherworldly Gaze
6 Invoke the Winds
7 Harness Infinity
G stage
8 Crushing Canopy
9 Crushing Canopy
10 Crushing Canopy
11 Crushing Canopy
12 Duel for Dominance
13 Duel for Dominance
14 Duel for Dominance
15 Duel for Dominance
16 Harald Unites the Elves
17 Orvar, the All-Form
18 Mirror Box
19 Overcharged Amalgam
20 Arcane Investigator
21 Crawling Barrens
22 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
23 Ardent Elementalist
24 Sea Gate Stormcaller
25 Quandrix Command
26 Roiling Regrowth
27 Scaled Herbalist
28 Island
29 Forest
30 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
31 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
Toralf stage
32 Toralf, God of Fury
33 Callous Bloodmage
34 Slaughter Specialist
35 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
36 Cleansing Wildfire
37 Tibalt's Trickery
38 Xorn
39 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
40 Planar Allay
41 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Switching from Plummet to Duel for Dominance to avoid having to add Hallowed Haunting; we can switch back if this doesn't work.
We can exile 19 instants/sorceries to get 19 more activations of Wizard's Spellbook, allowing us to target a Treasure token 19 times to get many copies.
This hopefully gets us to more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 20 -> 6) -> 7) -> 7 damage.
Also fight spells like duel for dominance (or blizzard brawl if we want access to indestructability), are another source of damage for the Toralf stage so we might need to rethink things there a little.
It would be nice to be able to subtract copies of Plummet and Crushing Canopy, but I'm not sure yet how to simplify the procedure using Exploit.
Edit: Oh, I guess there's no need to target Sea Gate Stormcaller, since we don't need the copies to destroy the Elf. So we alternate between targeting Ardent Elementalist and Overcharged Amalgam, so we only need two of each, and no Sea Gate Stormcaller.
So, we now have:
1 Searstep Pathway
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 First Day of Class
5 Otherworldly Gaze
6 Invoke the Winds
7 Harness Infinity
G stage
8 Crushing Canopy
9 Crushing Canopy
10 Plummet
11 Plummet
12 Harald Unites the Elves
13 Orvar, the All-Form
14 Mirror Box
15 Overcharged Amalgam
16 Arcane Investigator
17 Crawling Barrens
18 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
19 Ardent Elementalist
20 Hallowed Haunting
21 Quandrix Command
22 Roiling Regrowth
23 Scaled Herbalist
24 Island
25 Forest
26 Farideh, Devil's Chosen
27 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
Toralf stage
28 Toralf, God of Fury
29 Callous Bloodmage
30 Slaughter Specialist
31 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
Layers
32 Cleansing Wildfire
33 Tibalt's Trickery
34 Xorn
35 Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker
36 Planar Allay
37 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
So this gets us to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 24 -> 6) -> 7) -> 7 damage, if all goes according to plan.
Edit: Oh no, with this method we don't kill off an Elf when we're copying Ardent Elementalist. So yeah, we do want to copy Sea Gate Stormcaller, so I guess we go back to Iijil's plan with 4 of each instant.
Edit: I guess Callous Bloodmage doesn't work now that we can destroy creatures cheaply. We can replace it with Nezumi Prowler and Novice Occultist.
Edit: Oh haha, we can't use red spells to create red mana lands! In my defense, this waa a carryover from when we had Orb of Dragonkind, which couldn't be used on instants/sorceries. But if we don't have the Orb, we can't double up on red mana.
The best I can think of at the moment is to use Tibalt's Trickery to cast Kazuul's Fury. Unfortunately, we can't sacrifice a different creature for the copies, so it's only worth one layer. So, we drop to 6 layers.
Edit: We can use Markov Retribution instead of Kazuul's Fury, and the life gain will increase with each copy. So that takes us back up to 7 layers.
I came across that while trying to get Shattered Seraph or another card from that cycle to work as a fourth stage. We should have many untapped lands available, so the ability reminds me of Elvish Spirit Guide, which seems like a promising building block for a stage. I didn't get there but thought I'd share anyway, maybe one of you can get this further.
To get Rakish Revelers out of exile we need to cast it. To do that at instant speed during the combo we can include Arlinn, the Pack's Hope and use the +1 ability. But casting that creature costs the colored mana that we just got from the land by exiling it, so that alone seems pretty useless. There is no way to get multiple copies of "casting it" to use getting it out of exile as part of the stage.
Open the Omenpaths seemed promising, each copy allowing us to cast Masked Bandits once. But we don't need to cast them immediately, so this would go infinite if we add more pieces to build a working stage.
Using Secluded Courtyard and putting the new stage below the old blue stage would let us cast Spara's Adjudicators from exile freely. But at that point there are no other zone changes left that we could make cost a white.
So the plan would be to make the blue stage narrower, preferably only moving lands out of the graveyard and back to the battlefield. But I didn't find the necessary cards. Storyweave + Boseiju Reaches Skyward would be a narrow way to get lands out of the graveyard, but green is already used by Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, and there is little hope of changing the color of that stage.
Alternatively we find another way to cast the exiled creature and try to put the new stage above the blue stage. Then we'd need instants that move creatures between zones while leaving lands alone.
That's as far as I got. Any ideas?