MTG Salvation

Quote from Deedlit11 »

The original Sublime Epiphany fizzles.

No, it doesn't, because it reads "Target player draws a card." (Recent multi-modal spells are usually deliberately made hard to fizzle, by having either no modes target or all modes target.)

Ah yes, we definitely want to update our TYS copies as well!


Edit: Ah, interesting - we'll have to rework this then.

Right, yeah. In that case we can have the opponent draw a card.

Although in that case we can't profitably use the bounce mode, just clone/draw. (The original has to point at the original dragon to clone it, and there's no benefit in bouncing Wedding Invitation here.)

Oh right, we can just let the opponent draw! *facepalm*

So we can get one more token creation, bumping up to more than 2^^^7 at that point, and resulting in more than BB(2^^^8) damage in the end.

Remember that for any instants in the deck, if it's possible to set up a small unbounded computation without them then they could be used to interrupt it.
Illusionist's Strategem and Sublime Epiphany both appear to be able to do this. (There can be creatures on our side of the field during a computation due to necromancer triggers resolving before the computation-starting damage).

Would Kaverek's Spite + Ember Fist Zubera work as the computation starter and the final damage finisher? With two Zuberas dying to Spite then there will be two triggers; one of which starts the computation and the other of which is pointed at the opponent that will resolve after the computation finishes with a large number of Zubera deaths. Spite would discard the hand ensuring we can't interact with the computation. Potential Zubera's on the opponent's side dying don't seem to be an issue since that would only create finitely many potential decision points in the computation, which can't interrupt an unbounded computation at an arbitrary time.

Oh, good observation and fix! That Ember Fist Zubera can both start the computation and deal the final damage is very nice.

I wasn't sure whether we could get going without the card draw from Strategem/Epiphany, but we can use Fractured Identity to get two Astral Dragon ETBs to draw 8 cards.


Edit: Eh, I'm not sure we can do that and still send Xathrid Necromancers over to the opponent. But, Kaervek's Spite and Ember First Zubera are safer, without any apparent downsides.

Quote from jfb1337 »

Remember that for any instants in the deck, if it's possible to set up a small unbounded computation without them then they could be used to interrupt it.
Illusionist's Strategem and Sublime Epiphany both appear to be able to do this. (There can be creatures on our side of the field during a computation due to necromancer triggers resolving before the computation-starting damage).

Would Kaverek's Spite + Ember Fist Zubera work as the computation starter and the final damage finisher? With two Zuberas dying to Spite then there will be two triggers; one of which starts the computation and the other of which is pointed at the opponent that will resolve after the computation finishes with a large number of Zubera deaths. Spite would discard the hand ensuring we can't interact with the computation. Potential Zubera's on the opponent's side dying don't seem to be an issue since that would only create finitely many potential decision points in the computation, which can't interrupt an unbounded computation at an arbitrary time.

Is it possible to set up an unbounded computation without them? We'd have only Wedding Invitation for draw. And if we tried to play Illusionist's Stratagem later on, TYS would mean we'd deck ourselves before we could play Kaervek's Purge.

Either way, Ember-Fist Zubera does sound like a nice way to work in Kaervek's Spite. If necessary, we could edit creature types to keep the opponent's Zuberas from dying while making sure our second Zubera trigger is keyed to a creature type that will die a lot.

16 cards seems enticing, due to the fact that it's not too hard to draw 9 cards with Wedding Invitation. So we could try to drop Sublime Epiphany. But, if we wait until the Fractured Identity cast to create more Wedding Invitations, we can't put all the permanents we need into play at the start. If we use Astral Dragon to immediately get more Wedding Invitations, we'll only have one TYS on the battlefield when FI is cast.

This one's still at 17 cards, but now that we can keep instants out of our hand, I think we can use recursion to increase the damage.


Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Primal Vigor, Astral Dragon making four Vigor, Fractured Identity exiling Astral Dragon and giving the opponent 32 copies of it. (Presumably they get a bunch of Omniscience tokens.) Then play Echo of Eons.

Redraw Lotus and Identity, as well as drawing Thousand-Year Storm, Artificial Evolution, Arcbond, Comeuppance, and Alchemist's Gift. Play TYS and the four instants, then play Identity, getting seven copies from TYS. Each one targets an opposing Astral Dragon, making clones that target Primal Vigor, going up to 2^^^8 copies. The final dragon token makes 2^^^8 TYS tokens.

Sacrifice Lotus to flashback Echo of Eons, triggering every TYS. Each time it resolves, redraw the four instants and play them, making sure any needed Arcbond and Alchemist's Gift effects are loaded on the opponent's creatures.

After the final draw, end up with Fractured Identity back in our hand, along with Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, Artificial Evolution, Dralnu's Crusade, Ember-Fist Zubera, and Kaervek's Spite. Play the permanents, use Fractured Identity and Artificial Evolution to finish building our board, and then play Kaervek's Spite to finish.

Ooh, nice! It looks like we get more than 2^^^10 TYS tokens after the first Fractured Identity; we get 8 copies of the spell including the original, and after the first we wind up with 2^^34 > 2^^^3 Primal Vigors already. Then the final Fractured Identity should increase the numbers to 2^^^2^^^10.

I think I have a solution for 16 cards.



Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Primal Vigor, Thousand-Year Storm, Comeuppance, and Wedding Invitation drawing Replication Technique.

Play Technique, with the original targeting TYS. Between TYS and Demonstrate, get three copies. The first makes two Vigors, the second makes eight Invitations to draw our remaining cards, the third makes eight Vigors, the original makes 2^11 TYS. Then play the later cards as normal.

Very nice. There will be 2049 TYSes, so we get 8197 copies of Fractured Identity. The first 8192 will target Primal Vigor, which will pump up to more than 2^^8194 copies, and then we have the opponent create more than 2^^8195 copies of Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, and Dralnu's Crusade. Then targeting Thousand-Year Storm twice will get us more than 2^^8195 copies of TYS for our casting of Artificial Evolution. This will allow us to deal more than BBW(2^^8195) damage in terms of the Waterfall model, or BB(2^^8194) in terms of general Turing machines.

Quote from Deedlit11 »

Very nice. There will be 2049 TYSes, so we get 8197 copies of Fractured Identity. The first 8192 will target Primal Vigor, which will pump up to more than 2^^8194 copies, and then we have the opponent create more than 2^^8195 copies of Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, and Dralnu's Crusade. Then targeting Thousand-Year Storm twice will get us more than 2^^8195 copies of TYS for our casting of Artificial Evolution. This will allow us to deal more than BBW(2^^8195) damage in terms of the Waterfall model, or BB(2^^8194) in terms of general Turing machines.

I think we'll need to use two instances of Fractured Identity on Ember-Fist Zubera, so we can have multiple copies of it on our side of the field to both start the computation and deal damage at the end. So BB(2^^8192)?

Yup, BB(2^^8192). I suppose since there aren't any dangerous instants that we can keep in our hand, we can go back to Soulblast + Kaervek's Purge, and get back up to BB(2^^8194).

Quote from Deedlit11 »

Yup, BB(2^^8192). I suppose since there aren't any dangerous instants that we can keep in our hand, we can go back to Soulblast + Kaervek's Purge, and get back up to BB(2^^8194).

Yeah, that makes sense. In that case we'll need to target Xathrid Necromancer a second time to make sure we have creatures, but we can also skip on targeting Coat of Arms.

Going a different direction, I tried looking at some less-than-7-card deck sizes. Is there a way to hit lethal with 3 cards? The most I could get was 19 damage with Black Lotus, Channel, and Mistcutter Hydra.

For 5 cards, the best I can see is Black Lotus, Channel, Channel the Suns, Devilish Valet, and Sylvan Offering.

It's kind of cheesy, but since we assume luck goes our way: Mountain + Mana Clash.

Looks like you get 18 creatures from Sylvan Offering? So that would be 262,144 damage.


Edit: I suppose we can just go Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Devilish Valet, and Storm Herd, for 1,048,576 damage.

Not seeing yet how we could cast and flashback Army of the Damned.


Edit: Oh heh, I guess we don't check for death until after Mana Clash fully resolves, so I guess that doesn't work.

Quote from Deedlit11 »

It's kind of cheesy, but since we assume luck goes our way: Mountain + Mana Clash.

Looks like you get 18 creatures from Sylvan Offering? So that would be 262,144 damage.


Edit: I suppose we can just go Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Devilish Valet, and Storm Herd, for 1,048,576 damage.

Not seeing yet how we could cast and flashback Army of the Damned.


Edit: Oh heh, I guess we don't check for death until after Mana Clash fully resolves, so I guess that doesn't work.

Ooh, Storm Herd is good. And yeah, hitting 14BBBBBBR looks tough.

4 cards can kill, but the best I've come up with there is Black Lotus, Channel, Chromatic Orrery, Crackle with Power for 25 damage.

Edit: Black Lotus, Channel, Manamorphose, Crackle with Power can increase that to 30 on a mulligan to 3.

I was going to say we could hit 7 damage with 2 cards with Toil // Trouble if we could assume the opponent has a normal 7-card hand, but the fact that the opponent can take mulligans makes that ineffective.

The 1-card challenge: Gut shot. Or Sunscorched Desert.

I think the best for 1-card is Chancellor of the Dross, even though it's life loss rather than damage.

Unfortunately that means the best I can think of for 2-card is two Chancellors, which is kind of boring.

Black Lotus + Ball Lightning will also hit for 6.

4 cards: Black Lotus, Channel, Mistcutter Hydra X=8, Wine of Blood and Iron and activate twice for 32 damage.

The 0 card challenge:

Hmm, what can be done with 10 cards? Makes sense to build off of the 9 card Saw in Half deck; hopefully, we can get another layer or 2 for F_{w+2} or F_{w+3}.


Edit: For four cards, we can use Reality Smasher instead of Mistcutter Hydra, and activate Wine of Blood and Iron 3 times for 40 damage.


Edit: For 10 cards, perhaps replace Dromoka with Ancestor Dragon and Archangel of Thune? That should get another layer.

Good finds!

For 10-card, I think Patron of the Kitsune would be better than Ancestor Dragon, since that means one lifegain trigger per attacking creature rather than just one per Ancestor Dragon. Unfortunately, all the cards that do have separate lifegain triggers for each attacker are either legendary or not creatures so we can't copy them, or also make the opponent lose life. But at least Patron gets another round of Temur Ascendancy triggers.

Edit: Wait, Astral Dragon can copy noncreature enchantments. So I think Righteous Cause is best.

Edit: Alternatively, Druids' Repository + Shalai, Voice of Plenty? Given the difficulty of copying non-Astral Dragon creatures with the Mystic Sanctuary strategy, I think this could scale better.

Edit: Shalai doesn't have 4 power, but Herald of the Sun could work. Not as sure how that compares to the lifegain strategy though. (Although that also takes Righteous Cause + Archangel of Thune off the table.)

Edit: Heliod, Sun-Touched could work with Righteous Cause, but I think the lifegain strategies end up worse than Druids' Repository.

Hmm yeah, with Mystic Sanctuary we can't ever use Saw in Half on anything other than Astral Dragon, so we'll only have one copy of other creatures. Heliod, Sun-Crowned can be a noncreature permanent at the start, but once we start making many of them, that will stop. So we can't keep growing the number. And with limited triggers, Heliod and Archangel of Thune won't be worth a layer.

Druids' Repository plus Herald of the Sun looks good though. Oh, but there's an issue: we want all the cards in play besides Saw in Half when we start drawing, but that's 9 cards, and we only draw 1 from the initial Astral Dragon. We'll draw more when we cast Herald of the Sun, but we won't be able to play Mystic Sanctuary or Druids' Repository while those draws are on the stack. We need Mystic Sanctuary, so that would just leave us with one Druids' Repository... Oh, but that's good enough, since one will still trigger for every creature that attacks. Good.

So the start is the same as the one that plopfill explained; we get 5 draws from casting Herald of the Sun, we use 3 to draw and cast Saw in Half, getting up to 2^^^5, and then we use the last two to draw Saw in Half and Druids' Repository. Go into combat with everything, Druids' Repository triggers more than 2^^^5 times, and we get a layer for all the counters we get for each DR trigger, and a layer for having 2^^^5 of them. So a total of F_{w+2}(2^^^5).

It would be nice to turn lifegain into many triggers of adding +1/+1 counters - then we could maybe get F_{w+3} with 11 cards, by going Druids' Repository to gain mana many times, pay mana to gain life many times, then either pay life to add +1/+1 counters, or get +1/+1 counters from triggers. But, I don't know what to use for the last two pieces.