Replacing Reito Sentinel with Swiftgear Drake and Precognition Field with Melek, Izzet Paragon (so that Saw in Half can be copied to target Swiftgear Drake and another creature, but the downside is that it also copies Mordor Muster) gives a way to deal damage, but leaves a gap at mana value 3.
Replacing Corpsejack Menace with Kami of Whispered Hopes to fill that gap doesn't work, because even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, the token copies of Kami of Whispered Hopes are 1/1 reduced to 0/0 and die immediately.
We could replace Indebted Spirit with Ministrant of Obligation, but then Mordor Muster doesn't connect to the bottom of the sequence anymore. I thought of replacing Mordor Muster with Foulmire Knight and replacing Corpsejack Menace with Thraben Watcher, but then the token copies of Thraben Watcher don't survive (even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, which is possible).
Replacing Reito Sentinel with Swiftgear Drake and Precognition Field with Melek, Izzet Paragon (so that Saw in Half can be copied to target Swiftgear Drake and another creature, but the downside is that it also copies Mordor Muster) gives a way to deal damage, but leaves a gap at mana value 3.
Replacing Corpsejack Menace with Kami of Whispered Hopes to fill that gap doesn't work, because even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, the token copies of Kami of Whispered Hopes are 1/1 reduced to 0/0 and die immediately.
We could replace Indebted Spirit with Ministrant of Obligation, but then Mordor Muster doesn't connect to the bottom of the sequence anymore. I thought of replacing Mordor Muster with Foulmire Knight and replacing Corpsejack Menace with Thraben Watcher, but then the token copies of Thraben Watcher don't survive (even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, which is possible).
The current 12-card is a 3-stage deck, so even just covering four consecutive mana values would be enough for an improvement, but the higher ones seem easier than the middle.
Whatever 12-card ends up looking like, this means there's definitely a 13-card solution for w6, and potentially even w7. That increases the target for the Precursor-Swap deck to prove it can beat to be a valid 13-card solution. Do we have any way to confirm how many copies of Bishop of Wings this should take and that the deck can actually get that many?
14-card can avoid the issue with additional layers to easily beat any stage deck, which it could get as easily as adding a second copy of Audacious Swap. Higher card counts could add third and fourth copies, then potentially switch to something like Guff Rewrites History, but there are probably more efficient alternatives.
At some point, we'd hit enough cards to be able to construct a traditional stage on top of the computation, but I don't have enough experience with traditional stages to have a good guess for how many cards that would take or what the easiest ones might look like. Maybe something with Soul Foundry?
The 13 card deck should already be able to repeat BB computations millions of times, now that there are enough creature types (I count 304 in the rules) to implement the 15 state universal TM I converted. It takes ~14m bishops and a very conservative estimate for the improved start I found gets ~440m bishops. There's no danger of the classical recursive decks coming close.
How is the 12 card no-damage deck supposed to get started? I keep coming 1 treasure short. Love the mana cost based indexed stages though
The 13 card deck should already be able to repeat BB computations millions of times, now that there are enough creature types (I count 304 in the rules) to implement the 15 state universal TM I converted. It takes ~14m bishops and a very conservative estimate for the improved start I found gets ~440m bishops. There's no danger of the classical recursive decks coming close.
How is the 12 card no-damage deck supposed to get started? I keep coming 1 treasure short. Love the mana cost based indexed stages though
Oh, great!
I think this is a possible start for the 12-card deck, but I think it ends up one Mordor Muster short of what plopfill got:
Indebted Spirit dies, making two treasures and two spirits which both die immediately for another two treasures each for a total of six, enough to play Precognition Field followed by Mordor Muster for another four treasures.
Draw Reito Sentinel and spend one treasure to play it from hand.
Spend the other three treasures to play Saw on Pitiless Plunderer for four 0/0 Plunderer tokens that all die and see each other for twelve triggers. Resolve three for enough treasures to recover and play Saw on Exalted Sunborn, to double the effectiveness of the subsequent ones.
That should take care of mana, although getting Reito Sentinel to a size where we can make copies of it and loop the original becomes tricky. I think it ends up needing to use Mordor Muster an additional time to redraw Indebted Spirit to bestow onto it to get its stats high enough? Using Neoform to fetch it would take care of the issue, but I'm not sure how to pull that off.
Have I missed a way to create infinite creatures with the infinite mana? Maybe some way to combo without Heartless Summoning in play?
Ooh, good find!
I don't see any holes in it, without Heartless Summoning there shouldn't be a way to get Auriok Salvagers onto the field at all. I think this can also increase the score to F_{w6+1}(19), since we don't need to burn a Mordor Muster in startup. By having the rest of our starting hand as Exalted Sunborn, Corpsejack Menace, and Precognition Field, we could make the first Army token large enough to actually run it through the combo.
Unless... hmm. I'm trying to think through what that would actually look like. How can we get a Reito Sentinel that's big enough to make surviving tokens of it? We need to play Neoform on a Myr Retriever, but getting a Myr Retriever alive on the board requires a previous Neoform use. Getting those two Neoform uses requires having Reito Sentinel out, but if we play the original, we won't have a way to get it back into our library.
I think replacing Corpsejack Menace with Winding Constrictor could fix this. In that case we can't make surviving tokens from the first Constrictor, though.
Good points. We can still get the full 6 stages by keeping Corpsejack Menace and replacing Precognition Field with Soulfire Grand Master. We need to spent some Mordor Muster draws for the start to get all the instants/sorceries into hand and creatures usable. Going through the start in my head, we should still reach f_{w6+1}(16).
What if we instead swap out Reito Sentinel for Barkform Harvester? It is every creature type, including Army, so we can raise its toughness high enough to get living tokens with one Mordor Muster. We do have to get rid of all copies of it when we later want to use Mordor Muster for Army tokens, but I think it works out fine (either use a token's ability to put the card back into the library first, or get the card into hand with Myr Retriever's ability).
Play everything. (7 mana left)
Activate The Jolly Balloon Man (6 mana left) targeting Mondrak. Make 2 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers twice. Make 2, then 8 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Activate Mondrak (3 mana left) sacrificing The Jolly Balloon Man and one nonlegendary Mondrak token. Ratadrabik triggers and makes 1024 nonlegendary The Jolly Balloon Man tokens.
Activate a The Jolly Balloon Man token (2 mana left) targeting the legendary Mondrak. Make 1024 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers 1024 times. Resolve them all for >2^^1026 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (1 mana left), getting >2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (0 mana left), getting >2^^2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Play everything. (7 mana left)
Activate The Jolly Balloon Man (6 mana left) targeting Mondrak. Make 2 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers twice. Make 2, then 8 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Activate Mondrak (3 mana left) sacrificing The Jolly Balloon Man and one nonlegendary Mondrak token. Ratadrabik triggers and makes 1024 nonlegendary The Jolly Balloon Man tokens.
Activate a The Jolly Balloon Man token (2 mana left) targeting the legendary Mondrak. Make 1024 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers 1024 times. Resolve them all for >2^^1026 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (1 mana left), getting >2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (0 mana left), getting >2^^2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
For 6 cards: sacrifice Chromatic Orrery instead of sacrificing a nonlegendary Mondrak token (choosing to pay the mana portion of the cost before the sacrifice portion), and the final number increases to >2^^2^^2^^2051.
For 5 cards: Black Lotus, Channel, Nylea's Colossus, Pyromancer's Goggles, Devastating Onslaught with X=4, which gets copied. The copy produces 4 Nylea's Colossus tokens, getting 4*5=20 doubling triggers, and the original produces another 4 tokens, getting 4*9=36 doubling triggers. The total number of usable doublings is 56, exactly the same as before, but there is 1 more token, increasing the final damage by 6, to 6*2^56+42.
Black Lotus, Heartless Summoning, Myr Retriever, Exalted Sunborn, Pitiless Plunderer, Indebted Spirit, Precognition Field, Mordor Muster, Saw in Half, Neoform, Reito Sentinel, Corpsejack Menace should attain values of about f_{w6+1}(18), but not in damage.
Replacing Reito Sentinel with Swiftgear Drake and Precognition Field with Melek, Izzet Paragon (so that Saw in Half can be copied to target Swiftgear Drake and another creature, but the downside is that it also copies Mordor Muster) gives a way to deal damage, but leaves a gap at mana value 3.
Replacing Corpsejack Menace with Kami of Whispered Hopes to fill that gap doesn't work, because even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, the token copies of Kami of Whispered Hopes are 1/1 reduced to 0/0 and die immediately.
We could replace Indebted Spirit with Ministrant of Obligation, but then Mordor Muster doesn't connect to the bottom of the sequence anymore. I thought of replacing Mordor Muster with Foulmire Knight and replacing Corpsejack Menace with Thraben Watcher, but then the token copies of Thraben Watcher don't survive (even if the original gets a +1/+1 counter from Neoform, which is possible).
1. Mordor Muster
2. Indebted Spirit
3. Myr Retriever
4. Reito Sentinel
5. Pitiless Plunderer / Corpsejack Menace
6. Exalted Sunborn
The current 12-card is a 3-stage deck, so even just covering four consecutive mana values would be enough for an improvement, but the higher ones seem easier than the middle.
Could Fell Stinger work as a replacement for Mordor Muster?
Edit: Hmm, that doesn't give us a good first target that can actually survive Heartless Summoning.
Two other cards I have my eye on are Junk Diver and Winding Constrictor, but I don't see a way to make that start work.
14-card can avoid the issue with additional layers to easily beat any stage deck, which it could get as easily as adding a second copy of Audacious Swap. Higher card counts could add third and fourth copies, then potentially switch to something like Guff Rewrites History, but there are probably more efficient alternatives.
At some point, we'd hit enough cards to be able to construct a traditional stage on top of the computation, but I don't have enough experience with traditional stages to have a good guess for how many cards that would take or what the easiest ones might look like. Maybe something with Soul Foundry?
How is the 12 card no-damage deck supposed to get started? I keep coming 1 treasure short. Love the mana cost based indexed stages though
I think this is a possible start for the 12-card deck, but I think it ends up one Mordor Muster short of what plopfill got:
- Play Black Lotus and Heartless Summoning, float B.
- Play Myr Retriever for free which dies to get Black Lotus back, play it for WWW.
- Spend W to warp Exalted Sunborn and WB to play Pitiless Plunderer, then the last W for Indebted Spirit.
- Indebted Spirit dies, making two treasures and two spirits which both die immediately for another two treasures each for a total of six, enough to play Precognition Field followed by Mordor Muster for another four treasures.
- Draw Reito Sentinel and spend one treasure to play it from hand.
- Spend the other three treasures to play Saw on Pitiless Plunderer for four 0/0 Plunderer tokens that all die and see each other for twelve triggers. Resolve three for enough treasures to recover and play Saw on Exalted Sunborn, to double the effectiveness of the subsequent ones.
That should take care of mana, although getting Reito Sentinel to a size where we can make copies of it and loop the original becomes tricky. I think it ends up needing to use Mordor Muster an additional time to redraw Indebted Spirit to bestow onto it to get its stats high enough? Using Neoform to fetch it would take care of the issue, but I'm not sure how to pull that off.Replace Pitiless Plunderer with Auriok Salvagers.
Black Lotus -> Heartless Summoning -> Myr Retriever grabbing Lotus -> Salvager -> we have two mana left to get the infinite started.
Then Indebted Spirit doesn't need to help with the start anymore and can be replaced by say Wayward Guide-Beast to deal damage.
Have I missed a way to create infinite creatures with the infinite mana? Maybe some way to combo without Heartless Summoning in play?
I don't see any holes in it, without Heartless Summoning there shouldn't be a way to get Auriok Salvagers onto the field at all. I think this can also increase the score to F_{w6+1}(19), since we don't need to burn a Mordor Muster in startup. By having the rest of our starting hand as Exalted Sunborn, Corpsejack Menace, and Precognition Field, we could make the first Army token large enough to actually run it through the combo.
Unless... hmm. I'm trying to think through what that would actually look like. How can we get a Reito Sentinel that's big enough to make surviving tokens of it? We need to play Neoform on a Myr Retriever, but getting a Myr Retriever alive on the board requires a previous Neoform use. Getting those two Neoform uses requires having Reito Sentinel out, but if we play the original, we won't have a way to get it back into our library.
I think replacing Corpsejack Menace with Winding Constrictor could fix this. In that case we can't make surviving tokens from the first Constrictor, though.
On another note, 5 cards, using a newly revealed card: Black Lotus, Channel, Conjurer's Bauble getting back Black Lotus, Nylea's Colossus, Devastating Onslaught with X=7 on Nylea's Colossus, getting 56 triggers, for 6*2^56+36 damage.
Play everything. (7 mana left)
Activate The Jolly Balloon Man (6 mana left) targeting Mondrak. Make 2 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers twice. Make 2, then 8 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Activate Mondrak (3 mana left) sacrificing The Jolly Balloon Man and one nonlegendary Mondrak token. Ratadrabik triggers and makes 1024 nonlegendary The Jolly Balloon Man tokens.
Activate a The Jolly Balloon Man token (2 mana left) targeting the legendary Mondrak. Make 1024 copies, then the legend rule applies, and Ratadrabik triggers 1024 times. Resolve them all for >2^^1026 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (1 mana left), getting >2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
Repeat (0 mana left), getting >2^^2^^1027 Ratadrabik triggers and >2^^2^^2^^1027 nonlegendary Mondrak tokens.
For 6 cards: sacrifice Chromatic Orrery instead of sacrificing a nonlegendary Mondrak token (choosing to pay the mana portion of the cost before the sacrifice portion), and the final number increases to >2^^2^^2^^2051.
For 5 cards: Black Lotus, Channel, Nylea's Colossus, Pyromancer's Goggles, Devastating Onslaught with X=4, which gets copied. The copy produces 4 Nylea's Colossus tokens, getting 4*5=20 doubling triggers, and the original produces another 4 tokens, getting 4*9=36 doubling triggers. The total number of usable doublings is 56, exactly the same as before, but there is 1 more token, increasing the final damage by 6, to 6*2^56+42.
For one card with infinite mana, Fire Nation Turret is more than was possible before, I believe.