Hmm, so what could serve as the dueling spells/abilities for the stage? Both exiling the creature from our hand, and casting it from exile, don't get copies, so they can't be used. So we need some pair involved with moving the creature from the battlefield to our hand... shuffle it into the library, and draw it? But we're using draw in the blue stage, so I guess fetching from the library...
Edit: So far, the only thing I've come up with is using one of the exiling creatures that produces blue along with Bury with Books and some way to use a blue mana to draw or fetch creatures. (I didn't see anything for blue that only got creature cards, so it will probably just be general draw.) Then, we could leave another stage open that could possibly recycle lands for white, black, or red.
We can use Mage's Attendant instead of Overcharged Amalgam and go back to the original plan for the green stage with only 2 copies of each instant. Also, Orvar, the All-Form is an elf so we don't have to add a random elf card (and doing so would in fact go infinite)
Is there any way we can get a green stage to work without using Harald Unites the Elves and enchantment targeting?
Buuut so far I have not managed to get that green stage working. My best attempt has Extraction Specialist instead of Harald Unites the Elves. But then we cannot use Plummet copies to destroy the MV <=2 creature, since we could alternate Orvar, the All-Form triggers on Extraction Specialist and Sea Gate Stormcaller triggers on Plummet to get too much green. So we would have to use a non-killing instant (For the Family) and rely on Orvar triggers with different targets to destroy the MV <=2 creature.
I guess I'll just mention what I've been thinking about.
Ambitious Farmhand could be used for a white stage. This would be too cheap if there was a creature targeting stage below, but perhaps we could not have Hallowed Haunting, and use maybe Springmantle Cleric and Sigarda's Summons to get a flying elf? But, this is problematic if we need to ETB other creatures, which we do. So yeah, nothing great.
Edit: Would extra copies of For the Family allow for an extra cast or two at the top to make progress?
We can have enough copies of For the Family to always have one in hand to cast, but when we cast one that doesn't target an exploit creature (or Extraction Specialist in the alternating layer) then we don't get to sacrifice our MV <=2 creature and lose the green mana from that cast. I guess we could also target Earth-Cult Elemental to sacrifice lands and artifacts if that somehow helps to generate progress.
But two problems remain: Scaled Herbalist is a MV 2 creature that seems hard to replace. And if we need to play another one that flies then sacrificing both of them would give us too much green mana back.
We also can't use Plummet to target Crawling Barrens for mana. I was hoping we could play Tyvar Kell to generate black with all the Orvar tokens, but I think having access to the emblem would go infinite, since casting Orvar to draw cards would be cheaper than Graven Lore
I was wondering if there was a way to eliminate Vorinclex, maybe find a way to use Jin-Gitaxius instead of Rowan, but there don't seem to be a lot of ways to add counters to Sagas. It sucks that Satsuki, the Living Lore is sorcery speed.
Edit: Hmm, can't we just replace For the Family with a MV 2 instant, and have two mana producing creatures? The white stage has to produce green mana somehow, so we just need to make sure we make enough to pay for the generic mana while having green mana left over.
Copying Plummet with Rowan, Scholar of Sparks costs 2 generic mana. Otherwise using the generic as part of the relevant cost would work.
Without Plummet copies we are missing our way tog et progress again and neither Sea Gate Stormcaller nor Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant have flying/are zombies. I don't see how we could use them to create the copies we need.
Another idea I had was to use Skyclave Shades landfall ability as our way to get a creature back from the graveyard. We can use Avalanche Caller + Snow-Covered Swamp to get a black producing land we can target with For the Family. But Skyclave Shade doesn't fly, so while this approach gets us excess black mana, we wouldn't be able to target Orvar, the All-Form to make progress without losing a green.
A green instant with more than one target would be really helpful. But Defend the Celestus is the only one I found, and the double green mana cost doesn't work when paired up with Plummet for the other layer. The idea would have been to target Extraction Specialist + whatever creature is necessary to make progress / generate mana / reuse instants with the multi target spell, with no exploit creatures to sacrifice the MV <=2 and produce too much green from that. Then have Plummet in the alternating layer actually able to kill a MV <=2 flyer.
Edit:
Wait a second! With the Skyclave Shade idea we could use Sigarda's Summons to make pretty much all our creatures fly, except for the Snow-Covered Swamp, since that one doesn't enter the abttlefield as a creature. So targeting the land to trigger landfall requires For the Family, which can't kill Skyclave Shade with copies. But Plummet can target anything to make progress and have the copies kill Skyclave Shade. This might actually work!
Any way to give the swamp flying would go infinite. Are we currently planning to play any cards that can distribute +1/+1 counters?
Edit2: Slaughter Specialist can be replaced by Tribute to Horobi and probably many other things. Lost Mine of Phandelver could put a +1/+1 counter on the swamp. So we wouldn't be allowed to venture into dungeons and probably lose a number of layers. That would still be worth it for an extra stage.
I'm not sure how many Forests we need for the W stage to generate and accumulate G. Putting in 2 until we take a closer look at those lines. Also unsure about Secluded Courtyards.
Edit4: I keep messing up the toralf stage support cards. hopefully fixed now.
We should probably take a look at the recent cards to see if there's anything we can do to add layers. Also figure out how many instants/sorceries we need to get started.
We lose a layer at the end, so we are currently at
10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 6) -> 6) -> 6 damage, where X depends on how many Invoke the Winds we can cast.
Looking at G production at the top of the W stage:
The top layer is a batch of Orvar, the All-Form triggers giving us a Boseiju Reaches Skyward each. With Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider the first two chapters will trigger and we can move a forest from graveyard to library with a single Orvar trigger. To have the forests produce green we need some stuff from the top of the G stage. Some, like Scales Herbalist copies can be produced and wait around until we need to activate them. I'll just assume those are free. Others are timing sensitive and only trigger immediately after we spend a G. We need to make sure we outproduce these G costs.
I think there are 3 such G costs:
1. casting something targeting Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant to get a fresh batch of tokens.
2. casting Roiling Regrowth with copies from Jin-Gitaxias to sacrifice the forests.
3. casting something targeting Ardent Elementalist to get the required instants back to hand.
We are able to produce 4 G with 2 Forests in hand:
1. get fresh Jin-Gitaxiases and put a batch of Roiling Regrowth copies on the stack. (costs 2 G)
2. sacrifice Skyclave Shade (it is a land thanks to Ashaya, Soul of the Wild).
3. put a forest into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade again. Tap both for G. (generate 2 G)
4. repeat 2+3 using another Roiling Regrowth copy and the second forest. (generate 2 G)
5. use the rest of the Roiling Regrowth copies, sacrificing the forests.
6. make sure the instants are available to reuse (costs 1 G)
(7.) resolve 2 Orvar triggers form the top layer of the W stage to get the forests back to hand.
After resolving 2X Orvar triggers like that we have X G and put a big G stage on the stack. So 2 Forests looks like the right amount for the deck.
(I did try to put in Earth-Cult Elemental instead of Roiling Regrowth to skip the cost of creating a fresh Jin-Gitaxias batch. But the opponent would sacrifice the creatures that are targeted by the Toralf, God of Fury triggers deeper on the stack. So we cannot use that because the 4th stage would fizzle.)
Looking at W production at the top of the U stage:
Now I'm assuming the G from the top of the W stage is free as well.
We can use the top layer of Graven Lore copies to generate a bunch of creatures only mana:
1. Put Plains and Secluded Courtyard into play, tap them for mana. (generate 1 W, 1 creature only mana)
2. Cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward to put those lands back into the library. (costs 1 W)
(3.) Resolve a Graven Lore copy to get the lands back to hand.
So a single Secluded Courtyard card is enough to generate all the creature only mana we need. I did not expect that, but that cuts three cards from the deck in my last post
Have the plains piggyback on the Devious Cover-Up to get it out of the graveyard without spending W. Then we generate X W when we resolve X copies form the Devious Cover-Up layer below the top Graven Lore layer.
Edit:
Looking at a possible start. For the Family seems better than Otherworldly Gaze as the 1 mana play. I'll use 3x Snow Day instead of the Harness Infinity. Targeting and card draw seems useful. Using Vault Robber to turn spare cards into treasures still seems good.
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Scaled Herbalist
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds and cast Wizard's Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile For the Family. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Tibalt's Trickery. Cast the For the Family copy, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast and resolve the Invoke the Winds copy to untap Spellbook. Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill Snow Day and cast Orvar, the All-Form.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast the Snow Day copy targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, putting the original in the graveyard. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill Snow Day and cast Mirror Box.
- Resolve Snow Day to draw 2 cards and discard First Day of Class.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast both Snow Day copies targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 3 token copies. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Snow Day targeting Orvar. Create 4 token copies.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast three Snow Day copies targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 8*4=32 token copies. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Xorn.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Cast three Snow Day copies targeting Xorn. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Xorn, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Xorn. Cast the First Day of Class copy.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 40*5=200 token Xorns. Resolve First Day of Class.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Vault Robber. It gets haste.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Use the Scaled Herbalist from last turn to put Snow-Covered Swamp into play. activate Vault Robber, exiling Orvar to generate 202 treasures.
We have 202 mana of any color and 12 cards in hand. That should be enough to get access to everything and generate some big numbers before exiling the next creature for treasure.
There's probably something better out there than 3x Snow Day, since I didn't really look for powerful starting cards at all. But this can be our baseline to beat
Edit2: I just realized that Invoke the Winds targeting a treasure gives better returns for exiled cards than Vault Robber. Vault Robber still looks like a good source for the initial precombat treasure. If we have to use the Invoke the Winds from the last Spellbook activation to untap the spellbook again we get 40 fewer Xorns, but 162 mana is still plenty.
Great work! I'll keep looking at the layers, although now we have no colors available besides red, so it might be tough to improve.
Barbarian Class is a 1 mana spell that can give haste, if we can get a couple of red mana. I don't know if we can though - Vault Robber requires haste to use, and Culmination of Studies requires red mana.
Yeah, there's probably something better than 3x Snow Day, although that's a pretty good start.
Edit: So, it looks like we have 42 cards, not including cards that are exiled at the beginning. So, it comes down to how many cards we need to exile before we can make full use of them.
I think Invoke the Winds / Genesis Ultimatum / Snow Day / First Day of Class is probably enough to get started, we can get at least 20 cards in our hand or on the battlefield, and can get some targeting with Snow Day for some more Orvars. I'm wondering if even Invoke the Winds / Genesis Ultimatum / First Day of Class can get going, with 15 cards in hand or on the battlefield. We don't get targeting, so I guess we get two Treasure tokens from the first Vault Robber, but that may be enough to get started? Oh, but we need some maneuvering to have a creature card in our graveyard with a copy on the battlefield. But maybe the 4 card start is enough.
Edit: Wait, why did MTG Salvation tell me that Genesis Ultimatum was legal. Dammit MTGS, jebaiting me.
From the Ultimatums we get 14 more cards onto the battlefield / into hand. 5 of them can get haste if they are creatures. Put into play: Mirror Box, Sigarda's Summons, hasty Orvar, the All-Form, hasty Vault Robber, hasty Xorn, hasty Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, 5th hasty creature and 2x Forest. The 5 other cards can go into hand for a total of 8 cards in hand.
Tap 5 creatures (Skyclave Shade and the hasty non-Vault Robbers) and 2x Forest for 7 G. Cast 4 For the Family/Massive Might targeting Orvar to get 2^4 = 16 copies. Cast a Plummet targeting Xorn to get 16 tokens and destroy the original.
Tap Vault Robber exiling Xorn to get 17 treasures with 3 cards in hand. That is probably enough to get another Vault Robber activation with more Xorns and cards in hand and from there we get access to everything.
So I can at least reduce the number of initial exilings from 7 to 5, assuming the following is enough:
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth (6 cards in hand)
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Skyclave Shade (5 cards in hand)
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds, Turntimber Symbiosis, and Snow Day, and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Turntimber Symbiosis. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Xorn onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Orvar, the All-Form onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Xorn and create a token copy, then draw two cards and discard First Day of Class. (4 cards) Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Resolve the copy of First Day of Class to allow creature to come in with haste. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Xorn and create a token copy (3 Xorns), and then draw 2 cards and discard Snow Day. (5 cards) Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Jin-Gitaxius onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Resolve the copies of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Ashaya and Vault Robber onto the battlefield. Resolve the two Snow Days to target Xorn twice, creating two token copies (5 Xorns), and drawing 4 cards to discard 2. (7 cards) Resolve First Day of Class. Resolve Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
We can tap 4 creatures for 4 green mana. We can cast 1 copies of For the Family and Plummet to create 2 copies of Xorn, and put the original Xorn into the graveyard. We can then activate Vault Robber to exile Xorn and get 7 Treasure tokens.
So 5 exilings, getting us 7 Treasure tokens and 7 cards in hand. Meh.
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth (6 cards in hand)
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Skyclave Shade (5 cards in hand)
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds, Turntimber Symbiosis, and First Day of Class, and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Turntimber Symbiosis. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Orvar, the All-Form onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Resolve the copy of First Day of Class, giving creatures haste when they come into play. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis, putting Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Tibalt's Trickery. Resolve the two copies of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Xorn onto the battlefield. Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, countering First Day of Class and casting Mirror Box. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Days. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Vault Robber onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Orvar, getting a token copy. We also draw 2 cards and discard one. (4 cards) We can tap 4 creatures for 4 green mana. Cast 3 copies of For the Family, targeting Orvar 3 times to double the number of Orvars 3 times (16 Orvars). Resolve the copy of Tibalt's Trickery to counter Firsty Day of Class and cast Smite the Monstrous, targetting Xorn, destroying it and creating 16 copies. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
We can now activate Vault Robber to exile Xorn from the graveyard, creating 17 Treasure tokens. We have just 1 card in hand; that could perhaps be Tibalt's Trickery, which we can use to cast Sudden Insight, with perhaps 5 or more cards with different mana values in our graveyard.
Edit: Oops, we need to target something with Tibalt's Trickery. We can spend 5 for Practical Research, but probably 6 mana is worth it for Sudden Insight, if there's nothing nice for cheap mana.
That's a good start. We can follow the treasure creation with Ancestral Anger on Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Get 16 fresh copies, draw a card and then cast another Ancestral Anger, generating 16 new Orvars and drawing 17 cards. I think from that point we have enough resources to get a few layers of the G stage going before the next Vault Robber.
I've been looking at Rowan, Scholar of Sparks/Will, Scholar of Frost again. I don't think there is any danger of Rowan going infinite. Will can draw cards, but to reuse the planeswalker he needs to die. That requires damage from the Toralf stage, so that should be expensive enough and avoid an infinite.
The Rowan emblem copies of instants make the G stage a lot easier. And I think it is enough to cut one of the Mammoth Growths because we don't need to resolve through the entire Mammoth Growth layer to get fresh Sea Gate Stormcaller triggers.
The emblem might also allow us to cut a Forest. We wouldn't need to get fresh Jin-Gitaxias tokens to copy Roiling Regrowth, so cycling the forests as I described earlier only costs 2 G. With a single Forest we also only generate 2 G in that loop. But by including the Path to the World Tree layer we also get a Plains to drop into play and the landfall trigger from that should get us another G to pull ahead.
We still need Jin-Gitaxias to grow the layer size in the U stage. We also still need Sea Gate Stormcaller to create two spell copies at a time for the Tibalt's Trickery layer.
So that saves one card if the lines for the G and W stage work.
Lorehold Command is interesting; it's maybe a bit of a shame that we have to sacrifice a permanent to draw the two cards, since targeting Xorn will destroy it anyway with just one First Day of Class. I guess we can sacrifice Akoum Teeth, and I suppose Orvar, the All-Form. Substituting two Lorehold Commands for Snow Day and Smite the Monstrous will give us 4 cards instead of 1, and 26 life.
14 exilable instant/sorceries after we can get started, for 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 15 -> 6) -> 6) -> 6 damage.
Edit: Thought about using Orb of Dragonkind to activate Hobgoblin Bandit Lord and the start of the layer sequence, then using regular red mana to recycle Orb of Dragonkind, but it didn't seem to be better than just the layer from Markov Retribution.
One of the exilable sorceries we play should be Culmination of Studies, just so we can exile the Snow-Covered Swamp for some treasures. (We need the originals of our other lands around)
I looked at the G stage lines with Rowan, Scholar of Sparks emblems and think we can cut the second Plummet as well. I'll get around to writing that out sometime ^^'
The haste-mode of Lorehold Command is better for the start than an early First Day of Class. I didn't manage to get started with only 4 instants/sorceries exiled, but with 5 exiles I think we can get F_{w3}(~2^4200) Xorn tokens before exiling the first creature with Vault Robber.
Turn 3:
Tap Scaled Herbalist to put Snow-Covered Swamp into play. Tap the 3 lands for mana.
Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill 3. Cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
4th Exile: Lorehold Command. Don't cast Tibalt's Trickery. Command targets Orvar to create a token. Get Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste.
Tap Orvar, Jin and Ashaya for G. (3 G, 3 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family 3 times: Orvar, Orvar, Jin. (8 Orvars, 8 fresh Jins)
Get the Orvar tokens, put Xorn, Vault Robber, Ardent Elementalist and 5 other creatures into play. Get For the Family back from GY. Give those creatures haste and tap them for G. Sacrifice original Jin and draw 2 cards. Untap the Spellbook.
Cast For the Family targeting Ardent Elementalis. 24 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family 7 times (6x Orvar, then Jin) and get at least one copy back to hand in hand. (24*2^6=3*2^9=1536 Orvars)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery and cast Bloody Betrayal targeting Orvar. get 1536 Jin copies of that. Use all of those untaps to generate 1537 G.
Use most of that mana on For the Family to double Orvars (~2^1400 Orvars). Leave enough in the tank for the rest.
Draw some cards with Blood tokens, turn Snow-Covered Swamp into a creature and target it to get black, play green and black permanents.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. Tap it for red mana.
Put some green instants on the stack and prepare some fresh Jin tokens. Cast Tibalt's Trickery, get copies, counter those instants. Use that to get the nongreen, nonblack stuff that is missing for the 4 stages. In particular we have to get First Day of Class, Sigarda's Summons, Arlinn, the Pack's Hope and Rowan, Scholar of Sparks here. Some creatures like Toralf, God of Fury could have been fetched earlier, if they weren't get them here.
Prepare ~2^1400 Toralf, God of Furys with lifelink, ~2^1400 creautres under the opponents control and a vampire with ~2^1400 power.
Resolve one last Tibalt's Trickery, casting Markov Retribution dealing damage to one of the opponents creatures and triggering a bunch of Toralfs. Without emblems we cannot increase the number of Toralfs between triggers, nor give the opponent additional creatures in between. But we can overkill 2^1400 creatures, each triggering 2^1400 Toralfs, each dealing 2^1400 damage to one of our indestructible creatures. We gain ~2^4200 life.
Get the emblems we need from the planeswalkers. Put the Plains into play for 1 W and exile 2 Spara's Adjudicators from hand to produce 2 blue mana. Use those to turn our carddraw from all that life into more blue. Create F_{w3}(~2^4200) Xorn tokens. Then exile the first creature with Vault Robber to create some treasures.
(Put extra copies of Roiling Regrowth, Plummet and Mammoth Growth into the exilable spells to get through the G stage and W stage with only one Rowan emblem)
Edit: Looking at the start again, instead of casting that last Tibalt's Trickery and going through a few stages we can just cast Culmination of Studies to get treasures from Snow-Covered Swamp and not play Vault Robber at all. We don't get treasures for all our creatures, but being able to exile one additional instant/sorcery is worth it. We can get >2^1400 treasures out of the Swamp, with full access to the deck.
Nice! So that gives us 3 more instants/sorceries to exile, bumping 15 up to 18.
Just looking at the start, it seems that maybe that early Tibalt's Trickery is inefficient? We could perhaps exile another Turntimber Symbiosis for the 3rd exile, then the 4th could be Tibalt's Trickery casting Lorehold Command. We could then maybe cast Mirror Box directly. That doesn't look like enough, we still need the 5th exile, but perhaps we can get a little more out of it.
Edit: There are a few cards that can maybe create more treasures, like Magda, Brazen Outlaw, but none of them seem to add a layer.
I tried to go without Tibalt's Trickery a bit. But 3 mana for Mirror Box is surprisingly expensive when you need have it before any of the doubling can happen.
Ah, I see. I wonder if we could put a "mana that casts/activates creatures" stage prior to the U stage. We don't have a way to copy activated abilities I think, but we do have Reflections of Littjara, so we could theoretically get a stage off of ETB effects. Hmmm.
Well not ETB effects because we can already copy with the first stage.
Don't forget to put a First Day of Class into the exilable spells. Even if we don't use it at the start we need the haste on Skyclave Shade later ^^
If we use Repository Skaab instead of Ardent Elementalist the G stage becomes pretty straightforward. A layer of Orvar triggers on Repository Skaab can return our instants to hand and put Skyclave Shade into the graveyard. The alternating layer of Orvar triggers on Snow-Covered Swamp gives us black mana and landfall to replay Skyclave Shade. At the top we use Plummet to target Orvar, the All-Form for progress (and occasionally Mage's Attendant to refill available counterspell-tokens). Kill Skyclave Shade with a Rowan emblem copy of Plummet and then resolve through the Swamp layer and use triggers from the Skaab layer below that to bring the instants back to hand.
The top of the W stage also works out with just a single Forest:
Start with a Path to the World Tree layer on the stack, with Forest and Plains in hand, Skyclave Shade in GY:
1. put the forest into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for GG.
2. use G to target Repository Skaab. Use the triggers to sacrifice Skyclave Shade and bring all instants back to hand. Leave one trigger on the stack.
3. put the plains into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for WG.
4. resolve the Skaab trigger to sacrifice Skyclave Shade again.
5. use G to cast Roiling Regrowth with one copy from Rowan emblem. Sacrifice Plains and Forest.
6. use W to cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward. That gets Forest back to hand and Plains into the library.
(7.) resolve 1 trigger form the layer on the stack to get the Plains back to hand.
We get get 1 G per Path of the World Tree trigger, so accumulate X G from resolving the layer. And we only need a single Rowan emblem to do it.
Edit: Hmm, could we replace Mirror Box with Double Major? If we can still get started with 5 exiles, that would bump the 18 up to 19. Even if it took 6 exiles, it would still be better if we had a stronger start up to that point.
Edit: I think I could get going with 5 exiles if we still had Vault Robber, but Culmination of Studies takes some work. But maybe with 6?
5 exiles with Vault Robber would be better than 6 exiles with only Culmination of Studies. Assuming the last creature exile gets us more treasure than the single land exile.
5 exiles with Vault Robber and Double Major would also be better than the current 5 with Mirror Box and only Culmination of Studies for treasure.
I found Double Major very inconvenient for the start, considering we need blue mana to cast it and casting it at sorcery speed with Wizard's Spellbook doesn't do anything because it requires a creature spell on the stack. I'd be interested in any ideas that help for a start with that.
Oh derp, I forgot that Wizard's Spellbook only could be activated as a sorcery. Yeah, I can't get Double Major to work then.
Edit: Hmm, we supposedly need Sea Gate Stormcaller to get two copies at a time for Tibalt's Trickery. But, with a bunch of green mana, couldn't we build up a green mana stage, with each cast of Plummet or Mammoth Growth getting a Rowan copy? (and potentially a Jin-Gitaxias copy as well) So we could have a bunch of spells waiting on the stack to be countered by a Tibalt's Trickery.
Edit: I guess we can only get either a Rowan copy or a Jin-Gitaxias copy, but that seems like enough.
We could also use Tibalt's Trickery to find and cast Tibalt's Trickery. But that doesn't help in this case because we are limited by the Plummet copies that are on the stack below all the Tibalt's Trickery copies. Note that the copies are all still in the form of Jin/emblem abilities and not valid targets for Tibalt's Trickery.
Now let's include Sea Gate Stormcaller. Before using a Tibalt's Trickery copy to counter one of those Plummet copies we prepare Y kicked delayed triggers of Sea Gate Stormcaller. Then the Tibalt's Trickery counters Plummet and we cast another Tibalt's Trickery from that. We get Y triggers to create two copies. With each of those triggers we can have one copy counter the other and get to cast Markov Retribution.
We can't go infinite because this secondary layer can't find and cast Tibalt's Trickery: it has the same name as itself.
You Are Already Dead would go infinite with Lorehold Command. We could repeatedly attempt to destroy the same indestructible creature to draw cards. Still, it would work to replace two cards. If we find a use for life in the layers that would be great. Otherwise we need a start without Lorehold Command in 6 exiles without Vault Robber or in 5 exiles with Vault Robber to improve. Seems doable
Ah, so we can't use Lorehold Command. But, we can get 9 layers, if we can find a way to fix the above so it desn't have Lorehold Command. Something else that can get rid of lands/permanents, or something that targets lands/permanents, could work.
Edit: So far, the only thing I've come up with is using one of the exiling creatures that produces blue along with Bury with Books and some way to use a blue mana to draw or fetch creatures. (I didn't see anything for blue that only got creature cards, so it will probably just be general draw.) Then, we could leave another stage open that could possibly recycle lands for white, black, or red.
Is there any way we can get a green stage to work without using Harald Unites the Elves and enchantment targeting?
If that is possible we can get a white stage above it: Plains, Thraben Exorcism, Path to the World Tree, Boseiju Reaches Skyward, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider.
That stage could then be followed by a blue stage: 2x Spara's Adjudicators, 4x Secluded Courtyard, Devious Cover-Up, Graven Lore, Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant.
Buuut so far I have not managed to get that green stage working. My best attempt has Extraction Specialist instead of Harald Unites the Elves. But then we cannot use Plummet copies to destroy the MV <=2 creature, since we could alternate Orvar, the All-Form triggers on Extraction Specialist and Sea Gate Stormcaller triggers on Plummet to get too much green. So we would have to use a non-killing instant (For the Family) and rely on Orvar triggers with different targets to destroy the MV <=2 creature.
We can get the instant recursion working with Overcharged Amalgam and Repository Skaab. But that leaves us no opportunity to target Orvar or Crawling Barrens, so we can't get any progress or mana.
Ambitious Farmhand could be used for a white stage. This would be too cheap if there was a creature targeting stage below, but perhaps we could not have Hallowed Haunting, and use maybe Springmantle Cleric and Sigarda's Summons to get a flying elf? But, this is problematic if we need to ETB other creatures, which we do. So yeah, nothing great.
Edit: Would extra copies of For the Family allow for an extra cast or two at the top to make progress?
Edit:
Geralf, Visionary Stitcher is another way to give only some of our creatures flying. We could keep using For the Family to target the nonflying Extraction Specialist, and alternate that with Plummet, targeting Orvar, the All-Form to get token copies and using a Plummet copy to destroy Battlefield Raptor. Keep weaving in Overcharged Amalgam and Repository Skaab to reuse the instants.
To get copies of Plummet without Sea Gate Stormcaller shenanigans we could play Rowan, Scholar of Sparks and get an emblem. I don't think there is an infinite from reusing that or the other side Will, Scholar of Frost, so I hope including that card is safe.
But two problems remain:
Scaled Herbalist is a MV 2 creature that seems hard to replace. And if we need to play another one that flies then sacrificing both of them would give us too much green mana back.
We also can't use Plummet to target Crawling Barrens for mana. I was hoping we could play Tyvar Kell to generate black with all the Orvar tokens, but I think having access to the emblem would go infinite, since casting Orvar to draw cards would be cheaper than Graven Lore
I was wondering if there was a way to eliminate Vorinclex, maybe find a way to use Jin-Gitaxius instead of Rowan, but there don't seem to be a lot of ways to add counters to Sagas. It sucks that Satsuki, the Living Lore is sorcery speed.
Edit: Hmm, can't we just replace For the Family with a MV 2 instant, and have two mana producing creatures? The white stage has to produce green mana somehow, so we just need to make sure we make enough to pay for the generic mana while having green mana left over.
Without Plummet copies we are missing our way tog et progress again and neither Sea Gate Stormcaller nor Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant have flying/are zombies. I don't see how we could use them to create the copies we need.
Another idea I had was to use Skyclave Shades landfall ability as our way to get a creature back from the graveyard. We can use Avalanche Caller + Snow-Covered Swamp to get a black producing land we can target with For the Family. But Skyclave Shade doesn't fly, so while this approach gets us excess black mana, we wouldn't be able to target Orvar, the All-Form to make progress without losing a green.
A green instant with more than one target would be really helpful. But Defend the Celestus is the only one I found, and the double green mana cost doesn't work when paired up with Plummet for the other layer. The idea would have been to target Extraction Specialist + whatever creature is necessary to make progress / generate mana / reuse instants with the multi target spell, with no exploit creatures to sacrifice the MV <=2 and produce too much green from that. Then have Plummet in the alternating layer actually able to kill a MV <=2 flyer.
Edit:
Wait a second! With the Skyclave Shade idea we could use Sigarda's Summons to make pretty much all our creatures fly, except for the Snow-Covered Swamp, since that one doesn't enter the abttlefield as a creature. So targeting the land to trigger landfall requires For the Family, which can't kill Skyclave Shade with copies. But Plummet can target anything to make progress and have the copies kill Skyclave Shade. This might actually work!
Any way to give the swamp flying would go infinite. Are we currently planning to play any cards that can distribute +1/+1 counters?
Edit2: Slaughter Specialist can be replaced by Tribute to Horobi and probably many other things. Lost Mine of Phandelver could put a +1/+1 counter on the swamp. So we wouldn't be allowed to venture into dungeons and probably lose a number of layers. That would still be worth it for an extra stage.
Edit3:
Oops, I misread Slaughter Specialist. That card is clearly innocent.
Anyway, proposed 4 stage deck:
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
Support
8 Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
9 Sigarda's Summons
10 Mirror Box
11 Ardent Elementalist
12 Mage's Attendant
13 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
14 Orvar, the All-Form
G stage
15 Mammoth Growth
16 Mammoth Growth
17 Plummet
18 Plummet
19 Skyclave Shade
20 Snow-Covered Swamp
21 Avalanche Caller
22 Sea Gate Stormcaller
23 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
24 Plains
25 Thraben Exorcism
26 Path to the World Tree
27 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
28 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
29 Scaled Herbalist
30 Forest
31 Forest
32 Earth-Cult Elemental
U stage
33 Spara's Adjudicators
34 Spara's Adjudicators
35 Secluded Courtyard
36 Secluded Courtyard
37 Secluded Courtyard
38 Secluded Courtyard
39 Devious Cover-Up
40 Graven Lore
41 Toralf, God of Fury
42 Slaughter Specialist
43 Nezumi Prowler
44 Novice Occultist
Layers
45 Markov Retribution
46 Tibalt's Trickery
47 Xorn
48 Hoarding Ogre
49 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
I'm not sure how many Forests we need for the W stage to generate and accumulate G. Putting in 2 until we take a closer look at those lines. Also unsure about Secluded Courtyards.
Edit4: I keep messing up the toralf stage support cards. hopefully fixed now.
We should probably take a look at the recent cards to see if there's anything we can do to add layers. Also figure out how many instants/sorceries we need to get started.
We lose a layer at the end, so we are currently at
10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X -> 6) -> 6) -> 6 damage, where X depends on how many Invoke the Winds we can cast.
The top layer is a batch of Orvar, the All-Form triggers giving us a Boseiju Reaches Skyward each. With Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider the first two chapters will trigger and we can move a forest from graveyard to library with a single Orvar trigger. To have the forests produce green we need some stuff from the top of the G stage. Some, like Scales Herbalist copies can be produced and wait around until we need to activate them. I'll just assume those are free. Others are timing sensitive and only trigger immediately after we spend a G. We need to make sure we outproduce these G costs.
I think there are 3 such G costs:
1. casting something targeting Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant to get a fresh batch of tokens.
2. casting Roiling Regrowth with copies from Jin-Gitaxias to sacrifice the forests.
3. casting something targeting Ardent Elementalist to get the required instants back to hand.
We are able to produce 4 G with 2 Forests in hand:
1. get fresh Jin-Gitaxiases and put a batch of Roiling Regrowth copies on the stack. (costs 2 G)
2. sacrifice Skyclave Shade (it is a land thanks to Ashaya, Soul of the Wild).
3. put a forest into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade again. Tap both for G. (generate 2 G)
4. repeat 2+3 using another Roiling Regrowth copy and the second forest. (generate 2 G)
5. use the rest of the Roiling Regrowth copies, sacrificing the forests.
6. make sure the instants are available to reuse (costs 1 G)
(7.) resolve 2 Orvar triggers form the top layer of the W stage to get the forests back to hand.
After resolving 2X Orvar triggers like that we have X G and put a big G stage on the stack. So 2 Forests looks like the right amount for the deck.
(I did try to put in Earth-Cult Elemental instead of Roiling Regrowth to skip the cost of creating a fresh Jin-Gitaxias batch. But the opponent would sacrifice the creatures that are targeted by the Toralf, God of Fury triggers deeper on the stack. So we cannot use that because the 4th stage would fizzle.)
Looking at W production at the top of the U stage:
Now I'm assuming the G from the top of the W stage is free as well.
We can use the top layer of Graven Lore copies to generate a bunch of creatures only mana:
1. Put Plains and Secluded Courtyard into play, tap them for mana. (generate 1 W, 1 creature only mana)
2. Cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward to put those lands back into the library. (costs 1 W)
(3.) Resolve a Graven Lore copy to get the lands back to hand.
So a single Secluded Courtyard card is enough to generate all the creature only mana we need. I did not expect that, but that cuts three cards from the deck in my last post
Have the plains piggyback on the Devious Cover-Up to get it out of the graveyard without spending W. Then we generate X W when we resolve X copies form the Devious Cover-Up layer below the top Graven Lore layer.
Edit:
Looking at a possible start. For the Family seems better than Otherworldly Gaze as the 1 mana play. I'll use 3x Snow Day instead of the Harness Infinity. Targeting and card draw seems useful. Using Vault Robber to turn spare cards into treasures still seems good.
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Scaled Herbalist
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds and cast Wizard's Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile For the Family. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Tibalt's Trickery. Cast the For the Family copy, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast and resolve the Invoke the Winds copy to untap Spellbook. Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill Snow Day and cast Orvar, the All-Form.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast the Snow Day copy targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, putting the original in the graveyard. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill Snow Day and cast Mirror Box.
- Resolve Snow Day to draw 2 cards and discard First Day of Class.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast both Snow Day copies targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 3 token copies. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Snow Day targeting Orvar. Create 4 token copies.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Cast three Snow Day copies targeting Orvar. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Orvar, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Spellbook.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 8*4=32 token copies. Resolve Invoke the Winds untapping Spellbook.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Xorn.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Cast three Snow Day copies targeting Xorn. Cast the For the Family copy targeting Xorn, then cast the Tibalt's Trickery copy countering it. Cast the Invoke the Winds copy targeting Xorn. Cast the First Day of Class copy.
- Resolve the Orvar triggers, creating 40*5=200 token Xorns. Resolve First Day of Class.
- Resolve the Tibalt's Trickery copy. Mill 1 card and cast Vault Robber. It gets haste.
- Resolve Snow Days to draw 6 cards and discard 3.
- Use the Scaled Herbalist from last turn to put Snow-Covered Swamp into play. activate Vault Robber, exiling Orvar to generate 202 treasures.
We have 202 mana of any color and 12 cards in hand. That should be enough to get access to everything and generate some big numbers before exiling the next creature for treasure.
There's probably something better out there than 3x Snow Day, since I didn't really look for powerful starting cards at all. But this can be our baseline to beat
Edit2: I just realized that Invoke the Winds targeting a treasure gives better returns for exiled cards than Vault Robber. Vault Robber still looks like a good source for the initial precombat treasure. If we have to use the Invoke the Winds from the last Spellbook activation to untap the spellbook again we get 40 fewer Xorns, but 162 mana is still plenty.
Barbarian Class is a 1 mana spell that can give haste, if we can get a couple of red mana. I don't know if we can though - Vault Robber requires haste to use, and Culmination of Studies requires red mana.
Yeah, there's probably something better than 3x Snow Day, although that's a pretty good start.
Edit: Genesis Ultimatum looks pretty darn good.
Edit: So, it looks like we have 42 cards, not including cards that are exiled at the beginning. So, it comes down to how many cards we need to exile before we can make full use of them.
I think Invoke the Winds / Genesis Ultimatum / Snow Day / First Day of Class is probably enough to get started, we can get at least 20 cards in our hand or on the battlefield, and can get some targeting with Snow Day for some more Orvars. I'm wondering if even Invoke the Winds / Genesis Ultimatum / First Day of Class can get going, with 15 cards in hand or on the battlefield. We don't get targeting, so I guess we get two Treasure tokens from the first Vault Robber, but that may be enough to get started? Oh, but we need some maneuvering to have a creature card in our graveyard with a copy on the battlefield. But maybe the 4 card start is enough.
Edit: Wait, why did MTG Salvation tell me that Genesis Ultimatum was legal. Dammit MTGS, jebaiting me.
Don't play the forests before going for Tibalt's Trickerey. Play Skyclave Shade Turn 2 to have it in play.
1st exile: Invoke the Winds
2nd exile: Genesis Ultimatum. get Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
3rd exile: First Day of Class. Cast the Genesis Ultimatum first to get an extra copy.
From the Ultimatums we get 14 more cards onto the battlefield / into hand. 5 of them can get haste if they are creatures. Put into play: Mirror Box, Sigarda's Summons, hasty Orvar, the All-Form, hasty Vault Robber, hasty Xorn, hasty Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, 5th hasty creature and 2x Forest. The 5 other cards can go into hand for a total of 8 cards in hand.
Tap 5 creatures (Skyclave Shade and the hasty non-Vault Robbers) and 2x Forest for 7 G. Cast 4 For the Family/Massive Might targeting Orvar to get 2^4 = 16 copies. Cast a Plummet targeting Xorn to get 16 tokens and destroy the original.
Tap Vault Robber exiling Xorn to get 17 treasures with 3 cards in hand. That is probably enough to get another Vault Robber activation with more Xorns and cards in hand and from there we get access to everything.
Edit: Heh, baited
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth (6 cards in hand)
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Skyclave Shade (5 cards in hand)
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds, Turntimber Symbiosis, and Snow Day, and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Turntimber Symbiosis. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Xorn onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Orvar, the All-Form onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Xorn and create a token copy, then draw two cards and discard First Day of Class. (4 cards) Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Resolve the copy of First Day of Class to allow creature to come in with haste. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Xorn and create a token copy (3 Xorns), and then draw 2 cards and discard Snow Day. (5 cards) Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Jin-Gitaxius onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Day. Resolve the copies of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Ashaya and Vault Robber onto the battlefield. Resolve the two Snow Days to target Xorn twice, creating two token copies (5 Xorns), and drawing 4 cards to discard 2. (7 cards) Resolve First Day of Class. Resolve Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
We can tap 4 creatures for 4 green mana. We can cast 1 copies of For the Family and Plummet to create 2 copies of Xorn, and put the original Xorn into the graveyard. We can then activate Vault Robber to exile Xorn and get 7 Treasure tokens.
So 5 exilings, getting us 7 Treasure tokens and 7 cards in hand. Meh.
Edit: Oh, I forgot about Sigarda's Summoons. Hmmm.
Edit: Okay, trying again.
Turn 1:
- play Akoum Teeth (6 cards in hand)
Turn 2:
- play Forest. Cast Skyclave Shade (5 cards in hand)
Turn 3:
- play Forest. Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill Invoke the Winds, Turntimber Symbiosis, and First Day of Class, and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
- Tap Spellbook to exile Invoke the Winds. Resolve the copy to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Turntimber Symbiosis. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Orvar, the All-Form onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile First Day of Class. Resolve the copy of First Day of Class, giving creatures haste when they come into play. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis, putting Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Tibalt's Trickery. Resolve the two copies of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Xorn onto the battlefield. Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, countering First Day of Class and casting Mirror Box. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
- Tap Spellbook to exile Snow Days. Resolve the copy of Turntimber Symbiosis to put Vault Robber onto the battlefield. Resolve the copy of Snow Day to target Orvar, getting a token copy. We also draw 2 cards and discard one. (4 cards) We can tap 4 creatures for 4 green mana. Cast 3 copies of For the Family, targeting Orvar 3 times to double the number of Orvars 3 times (16 Orvars). Resolve the copy of Tibalt's Trickery to counter Firsty Day of Class and cast Smite the Monstrous, targetting Xorn, destroying it and creating 16 copies. Resolve the copy of Invoke the Winds to untap Spellbook.
We can now activate Vault Robber to exile Xorn from the graveyard, creating 17 Treasure tokens. We have just 1 card in hand; that could perhaps be Tibalt's Trickery, which we can use to cast Sudden Insight, with perhaps 5 or more cards with different mana values in our graveyard.
Edit: Oops, we need to target something with Tibalt's Trickery. We can spend 5 for Practical Research, but probably 6 mana is worth it for Sudden Insight, if there's nothing nice for cheap mana.
I've been looking at Rowan, Scholar of Sparks/Will, Scholar of Frost again. I don't think there is any danger of Rowan going infinite. Will can draw cards, but to reuse the planeswalker he needs to die. That requires damage from the Toralf stage, so that should be expensive enough and avoid an infinite.
The Rowan emblem copies of instants make the G stage a lot easier. And I think it is enough to cut one of the Mammoth Growths because we don't need to resolve through the entire Mammoth Growth layer to get fresh Sea Gate Stormcaller triggers.
The emblem might also allow us to cut a Forest. We wouldn't need to get fresh Jin-Gitaxias tokens to copy Roiling Regrowth, so cycling the forests as I described earlier only costs 2 G. With a single Forest we also only generate 2 G in that loop. But by including the Path to the World Tree layer we also get a Plains to drop into play and the landfall trigger from that should get us another G to pull ahead.
We still need Jin-Gitaxias to grow the layer size in the U stage. We also still need Sea Gate Stormcaller to create two spell copies at a time for the Tibalt's Trickery layer.
So that saves one card if the lines for the G and W stage work.
Edit: Lorehold Command looks like a good card to use for the start. Could be better a bit better than Snow Day and Smite the Monstrous during that 5th exile.
So, it looks like the current deck is:
1 Searstep Pathway
2 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Wizard's Spellbook
4 Invoke the Winds
5 Turntimber Symbiosis
6 First Day of Class
7 Lorehold Command
8 Vault Robber
Support
9 Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
10 Sigarda's Summons
11 Mirror Box
12 Ardent Elementalist
13 Mage's Attendant
14 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
15 Orvar, the All-Form
16 Rowan, Scholar of Sparks
17 Mammoth Growth
18 Plummet
19 Plummet
20 Skyclave Shade
21 Snow-Covered Swamp
22 Avalanche Caller
23 Sea Gate Stormcaller
24 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
W stage
25 Plains
26 Thraben Exorcism
27 Path to the World Tree
28 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
29 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
30 Scaled Herbalist
31 Forest
32 Earth-Cult Elemental
33 Spara's Adjudicators
34 Spara's Adjudicators
35 Secluded Courtyard
36 Devious Cover-Up
37 Graven Lore
Toralf stage
38 Toralf, God of Fury
39 Slaughter Specialist
40 Nezumi Prowler
41 Novice Occultist
Layers
42 Markov Retribution
43 Tibalt's Trickery
44 Xorn
45 Hoarding Ogre
46 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Extra exilable spells
4 For the Family
4 Ancestral Anger
3 Lorehold Command
3 Snow Day
14 exilable instant/sorceries after we can get started, for 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 15 -> 6) -> 6) -> 6 damage.
Edit: Thought about using Orb of Dragonkind to activate Hobgoblin Bandit Lord and the start of the layer sequence, then using regular red mana to recycle Orb of Dragonkind, but it didn't seem to be better than just the layer from Markov Retribution.
Some improvements:
We should play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass or similar as our starting red land. The front side Shatterskull Smashing can be exiled for maximum value.
One of the exilable sorceries we play should be Culmination of Studies, just so we can exile the Snow-Covered Swamp for some treasures. (We need the originals of our other lands around)
I looked at the G stage lines with Rowan, Scholar of Sparks emblems and think we can cut the second Plummet as well. I'll get around to writing that out sometime ^^'
The haste-mode of Lorehold Command is better for the start than an early First Day of Class. I didn't manage to get started with only 4 instants/sorceries exiled, but with 5 exiles I think we can get F_{w3}(~2^4200) Xorn tokens before exiling the first creature with Vault Robber.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass tapped.
Turn 2:
Play Forest. Play Scaled Herbalist.
Turn 3:
Tap Scaled Herbalist to put Snow-Covered Swamp into play. Tap the 3 lands for mana.
Cast For the Family and counter it with Tibalt's Trickery. Mill 3. Cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
1st Exile: Invoke the Winds. Untap the Spellbook.
2nd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Untap the Spellbook.
3rd Exile: Tibalt's Trickery. Cast Invoke the Wind first, then Tibalt's Trickery, countering it. Use the Jin copy to untap Spellbook. Get Orvar, the All-Form and Mirror Box. Mill 1.
4th Exile: Lorehold Command. Don't cast Tibalt's Trickery. Command targets Orvar to create a token. Get Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste.
Tap Orvar, Jin and Ashaya for G. (3 G, 3 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family 3 times: Orvar, Orvar, Jin. (8 Orvars, 8 fresh Jins)
5th Exile: Lorehold Command. Cast spells, stack should look something like this:
------------
16x Orvar token creation.
8x Jin-copy of Turntimber Symbiosis
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + sacrifice, draw)
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Turntimber Symbiosis
------------
Get the Orvar tokens, put Xorn, Vault Robber, Ardent Elementalist and 5 other creatures into play. Get For the Family back from GY. Give those creatures haste and tap them for G. Sacrifice original Jin and draw 2 cards. Untap the Spellbook.
Cast For the Family targeting Ardent Elementalis. 24 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family 7 times (6x Orvar, then Jin) and get at least one copy back to hand in hand. (24*2^6=3*2^9=1536 Orvars)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery and cast Bloody Betrayal targeting Orvar. get 1536 Jin copies of that. Use all of those untaps to generate 1537 G.
Use most of that mana on For the Family to double Orvars (~2^1400 Orvars). Leave enough in the tank for the rest.
Draw some cards with Blood tokens, turn Snow-Covered Swamp into a creature and target it to get black, play green and black permanents.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. Tap it for red mana.
Put some green instants on the stack and prepare some fresh Jin tokens. Cast Tibalt's Trickery, get copies, counter those instants. Use that to get the nongreen, nonblack stuff that is missing for the 4 stages. In particular we have to get First Day of Class, Sigarda's Summons, Arlinn, the Pack's Hope and Rowan, Scholar of Sparks here. Some creatures like Toralf, God of Fury could have been fetched earlier, if they weren't get them here.
Prepare ~2^1400 Toralf, God of Furys with lifelink, ~2^1400 creautres under the opponents control and a vampire with ~2^1400 power.
Resolve one last Tibalt's Trickery, casting Markov Retribution dealing damage to one of the opponents creatures and triggering a bunch of Toralfs. Without emblems we cannot increase the number of Toralfs between triggers, nor give the opponent additional creatures in between. But we can overkill 2^1400 creatures, each triggering 2^1400 Toralfs, each dealing 2^1400 damage to one of our indestructible creatures. We gain ~2^4200 life.
Get the emblems we need from the planeswalkers. Put the Plains into play for 1 W and exile 2 Spara's Adjudicators from hand to produce 2 blue mana. Use those to turn our carddraw from all that life into more blue. Create F_{w3}(~2^4200) Xorn tokens. Then exile the first creature with Vault Robber to create some treasures.
(Put extra copies of Roiling Regrowth, Plummet and Mammoth Growth into the exilable spells to get through the G stage and W stage with only one Rowan emblem)
Edit: Looking at the start again, instead of casting that last Tibalt's Trickery and going through a few stages we can just cast Culmination of Studies to get treasures from Snow-Covered Swamp and not play Vault Robber at all. We don't get treasures for all our creatures, but being able to exile one additional instant/sorcery is worth it. We can get >2^1400 treasures out of the Swamp, with full access to the deck.
Just looking at the start, it seems that maybe that early Tibalt's Trickery is inefficient? We could perhaps exile another Turntimber Symbiosis for the 3rd exile, then the 4th could be Tibalt's Trickery casting Lorehold Command. We could then maybe cast Mirror Box directly. That doesn't look like enough, we still need the 5th exile, but perhaps we can get a little more out of it.
Edit: There are a few cards that can maybe create more treasures, like Magda, Brazen Outlaw, but none of them seem to add a layer.
Edit: Oh, I realize the Orb of Dragonkind idea *could* get us an extra layer, because of Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Instead of Markov Retribution, we could use Lorehold Command to sacrifice the Orb of Dragonkind, which we can shuffle into the library with Devious Cover-Up, then draw again with Graven Lore. That could get us to 7 layers.
Magda, Brazen Outlaw would go infinite. We can tap dwarfs easily with Ashaya, Soul of the Wild.
We already get any color of mana for dragon spells and abilities from Secluded Courtyard. So Orb of Dragonkind wouldn't give us anything new.
Well not ETB effects because we can already copy with the first stage.
Edit: Updated deck.
1 Shatterskull Smashing
2 For the Family
3 Tibalt's Trickery
4 Wizard's Spellbook
5 Invoke the Winds
6 Turntimber Symbiosis
7 Lorehold Command
8 Lorehold Command
Support
9 Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
10 Sigarda's Summons
11 Mirror Box
12 Ardent Elementalist
13 Mage's Attendant
14 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
15 Orvar, the All-Form
16 Rowan, Scholar of Sparks
G stage
17 Mammoth Growth
18 Plummet
19 Skyclave Shade
20 Snow-Covered Swamp
21 Avalanche Caller
22 Sea Gate Stormcaller
23 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
24 Plains
25 Thraben Exorcism
26 Path to the World Tree
27 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
28 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
29 Scaled Herbalist
30 Forest
31 Roiling Regrowth
U stage
32 Spara's Adjudicators
33 Spara's Adjudicators
34 Secluded Courtyard
35 Devious Cover-Up
36 Graven Lore
Toralf stage
37 Toralf, God of Fury
38 Slaughter Specialist
39 Nezumi Prowler
40 Novice Occultist
41 Markov Retribution
42 Tibalt's Trickery
43 Xorn
44 Hoarding Ogre
45 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Extra exilable spells
3 For the Family
1 Shatterskull Smashing
1 Culmination of Studies
4 Ancestral Anger
2 Lorehold Command
4 Bloody Betrayal
Edit: Yeah, I can't think of anything that we get from Reflections of Littjara that we don't get just from targeting creatures.
If we use Repository Skaab instead of Ardent Elementalist the G stage becomes pretty straightforward. A layer of Orvar triggers on Repository Skaab can return our instants to hand and put Skyclave Shade into the graveyard. The alternating layer of Orvar triggers on Snow-Covered Swamp gives us black mana and landfall to replay Skyclave Shade. At the top we use Plummet to target Orvar, the All-Form for progress (and occasionally Mage's Attendant to refill available counterspell-tokens). Kill Skyclave Shade with a Rowan emblem copy of Plummet and then resolve through the Swamp layer and use triggers from the Skaab layer below that to bring the instants back to hand.
The top of the W stage also works out with just a single Forest:
Start with a Path to the World Tree layer on the stack, with Forest and Plains in hand, Skyclave Shade in GY:
1. put the forest into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for GG.
2. use G to target Repository Skaab. Use the triggers to sacrifice Skyclave Shade and bring all instants back to hand. Leave one trigger on the stack.
3. put the plains into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for WG.
4. resolve the Skaab trigger to sacrifice Skyclave Shade again.
5. use G to cast Roiling Regrowth with one copy from Rowan emblem. Sacrifice Plains and Forest.
6. use W to cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward. That gets Forest back to hand and Plains into the library.
(7.) resolve 1 trigger form the layer on the stack to get the Plains back to hand.
We get get 1 G per Path of the World Tree trigger, so accumulate X G from resolving the layer. And we only need a single Rowan emblem to do it.
1 Shatterskull Smashing
2 For the Family
3 Tibalt's Trickery
4 Wizard's Spellbook
5 Invoke the Winds
6 Turntimber Symbiosis
7 Lorehold Command
8 Lorehold Command
Support
9 Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
10 Sigarda's Summons
11 Mirror Box
12 Repository Skaab
13 Mage's Attendant
14 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
15 Orvar, the All-Form
16 Rowan, Scholar of Sparks
G stage
17 Mammoth Growth
18 Plummet
19 Skyclave Shade
20 Snow-Covered Swamp
21 Avalanche Caller
22 Sea Gate Stormcaller
23 Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
24 Plains
25 Thraben Exorcism
26 Path to the World Tree
27 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
28 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
29 Scaled Herbalist
30 Forest
31 Roiling Regrowth
U stage
32 Spara's Adjudicators
33 Spara's Adjudicators
34 Secluded Courtyard
35 Devious Cover-Up
36 Graven Lore
Toralf stage
37 Toralf, God of Fury
38 Slaughter Specialist
39 Nezumi Prowler
40 Novice Occultist
41 Markov Retribution
42 Tibalt's Trickery
43 Xorn
44 Hoarding Ogre
45 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
Extra exilable spells
3 For the Family
1 Shatterskull Smashing
1 Culmination of Studies
1 First Day of Class
4 Ancestral Anger
2 Lorehold Command
3 Bloody Betrayal
dealing more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> (10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 18 -> 6) -> 6) -> 6 damage.
Edit: Hmm, could we replace Mirror Box with Double Major? If we can still get started with 5 exiles, that would bump the 18 up to 19. Even if it took 6 exiles, it would still be better if we had a stronger start up to that point.
Edit: I think I could get going with 5 exiles if we still had Vault Robber, but Culmination of Studies takes some work. But maybe with 6?
5 exiles with Vault Robber and Double Major would also be better than the current 5 with Mirror Box and only Culmination of Studies for treasure.
I found Double Major very inconvenient for the start, considering we need blue mana to cast it and casting it at sorcery speed with Wizard's Spellbook doesn't do anything because it requires a creature spell on the stack. I'd be interested in any ideas that help for a start with that.
Edit: Hmm, we supposedly need Sea Gate Stormcaller to get two copies at a time for Tibalt's Trickery. But, with a bunch of green mana, couldn't we build up a green mana stage, with each cast of Plummet or Mammoth Growth getting a Rowan copy? (and potentially a Jin-Gitaxias copy as well) So we could have a bunch of spells waiting on the stack to be countered by a Tibalt's Trickery.
Edit: I guess we can only get either a Rowan copy or a Jin-Gitaxias copy, but that seems like enough.
Edit: I think You are Already Dead can replace both Nezumi Prowler and Novice Occultist, and can potentially save our life total for the ending layers.
Edit: So with life a possibility for the ending sequence, perhaps we can get 8 layers:
Layer 1: a copy of Markov Retribution can deal a lot of damage to an opponent's creature.
Layer 2: Casting Markov Retribution gets a lot of copies.
Layer 3: Casting Tibalt's Trickery gets a lot of copies, each of which can cast Markov Retribution.
Layer 4: Paying 10 life to Beladros Witherbloom can untap many copies of Volatile Fjord.
Layer 5: Gaining life from Swiftwater Cliffs gains us a lot of life, thanks to Heron of Hope.
Layer 6: Putting Swiftwater Cliffs into play causes it to trigger man times thanks to Ancient Greenwarden.
Layer 7: Casting Lorehold Command gets many copies, each of which can sacrifice Swiftwater Cliffs.
Layer 8: We can use Wizard's Spellbook around 15 times or so.
We could also use Tibalt's Trickery to find and cast Tibalt's Trickery. But that doesn't help in this case because we are limited by the Plummet copies that are on the stack below all the Tibalt's Trickery copies. Note that the copies are all still in the form of Jin/emblem abilities and not valid targets for Tibalt's Trickery.
Now let's include Sea Gate Stormcaller. Before using a Tibalt's Trickery copy to counter one of those Plummet copies we prepare Y kicked delayed triggers of Sea Gate Stormcaller. Then the Tibalt's Trickery counters Plummet and we cast another Tibalt's Trickery from that. We get Y triggers to create two copies. With each of those triggers we can have one copy counter the other and get to cast Markov Retribution.
We can't go infinite because this secondary layer can't find and cast Tibalt's Trickery: it has the same name as itself.
You Are Already Dead would go infinite with Lorehold Command. We could repeatedly attempt to destroy the same indestructible creature to draw cards. Still, it would work to replace two cards. If we find a use for life in the layers that would be great. Otherwise we need a start without Lorehold Command in 6 exiles without Vault Robber or in 5 exiles with Vault Robber to improve. Seems doable
Ah, so we can't use Lorehold Command. But, we can get 9 layers, if we can find a way to fix the above so it desn't have Lorehold Command. Something else that can get rid of lands/permanents, or something that targets lands/permanents, could work.
Edit: Perhaps Light the Way or Magma Opus.