Because the former could potentially allow for a Dire-Strain Rampage targeting Treasure loop in the end step. Via putting it back in the library and using Tibalt's Trickery to cast it and bypass the sorcery speed restriction. It might not be possible to set that up, but we don't have to take that risk when we can just make sure that Trickery can only cast anything at most once.
Edit: Hmm, I think we can do even better with Caberetti Confluence instead of Mirage Phalanx. Oh, except all 3 copyings from CC happen in direct succession, and copying a hasted creature created by CC won't give the new creature haste, I don't think. Pretty close though...
Edit: I think the Mirage Phalanx gets us more than 2^^35 rather than 2^^34. We get 5 Parallel Lives after the Astral Dragon ETB trigger, then in combat we get 32 copies of Astral Dragon. The first Dragon ETB gets us 69 PLs, the second gets us 2^70 + 69 > 2^^4, and so on until the 32nd gets us > 2^^34. Then we get more than 2^^35 copies of Mirage Phalanx. This keeps it ahead of something like Twinflame, which can target all creatures.
Edit: Actually no, Twinflame is still better, since we will get 5*32 + 5 = 165 copies of Doubling Season, along with 32 new copies of Astral Dragon, so we will get more creatures in the end, but still between 2^^35 and 2^^36.
Edit: Ah no, Astral Dragon can only copy noncreature permanents, which won't have haste.
Play Sunscorched Desert. Opponent goes to 19. Good start!
Play Black Lotus, Eureka, put everything into play.
Pair Mirage Phalanx and Astral Dragon, use the Astral Dragon trigger to create 4 Finest Hour copies.
Go to combat, create 2 Astral Dragon copies. Use both triggers to create 4 Finest Hour copies each.
Attack with a single hasty Astral Dragon. 13 Finest Hours trigger. Exalted pumps the Dragon to 17/17. After Damage the opponent survives with 2 life.
The hasty tokens from Mirage Phalanx's ability go away at the end of combat, but the tokens created by the Astral Dragon copies stay around.
We now get 13 extra combats.
1st extra combat:
We create 2 Astral Dragon tokens. Both triggers target Parallel Lives. We go from 1 to 5 to 69 copies.
2nd extra combat:
We create 2^70 Astral Dragon tokens. All triggers target Parallel Lives. Each of them takes us from X copies of Parallel Lives to more than 2^X copies. So in total we go to more than 2^^(2^70) > 2^^(2^^4) = 2^^^4
3rd to 13th extra combat:
Every combat takes us from X Parallel Lives to more than 2^^X copies. So in the 13th extra combat we get more then 2^^^15 Parallel Lives.
13th extra combat continued:
We create more than 2^^^15 copies of Mirage Phalanx with haste and attack the opponent.
If it wasn't for that pesky mechanic where the opponent dies when we deal too much damage to them we could go for about 2^^34 extra combats instead of 13. I was hoping to use a land like High Market to get rid of the attacker after triggering Finest Hour. But the original is tapped at the start and any copies by Astral Dragon will be creatures without haste
Forbidden Orchard gives the opponent a blocker, which they could use to survive a massive exalted attack. But they are not forced to block...
Use Astral Dragon to make 4 Parallel Lives, tap Kiki to make 16 Astral Dragons. 15 of them make Parallel Lives, the last one makes a bunch of Wastes for a ton of Moraug triggers. Each combat, untap Kiki, tap again for more Parallel Lives. After the last Moraug combat, wait for the second main phase, tap Kiki again, and again use the last Astral Dragon trigger to make Wastes for an even bigger number of combats the second time. Keep making more clones, do a big swing on the final combat.
Edit: Ability to multiply the Mirage Phalanxes on each combat probably outweighs this by a lot.
Black Lotus, then Channel: 19+G
Aetherflux Reservoir: 15+G
Cogwork Assembler (+4): 16+G
Pay 7 to make a copy of Aetherflux Reservoir: 9+G
Parallel Lives (+5*2): 16
Pay 7 to make 2 copies of Aetherflux Reservoir: 9
Mycosynth Lattice (+6*4): 27
Pay 7 to make 2 copies of Parallel Lives: 20
Pay 7 to make 8 copies of Parallel Lives: 13
Pay 7 to make 2048 copies of Aetherflux Reservoir: 6
Creeping Renaissance (+7*2052): 14365
In response, make lots of copies of Parallel Lives, but also make some copies of Cogwork Assembler, and pay 50 life to Aetherflux Reservoir to destroy the nontoken Cogwork Assembler, so that Creeping Renaissance can return both Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus.
Each spell cast gives a tetration, and there are 5 more that can be cast (Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus, then Creeping Renaissance again, and Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus again).
If there are extra cards in the library, replace Creeping Renaissance with Whispers of the Muse to get >2^^^55.
I just finished my calculations for the Molten Echoes + Restoration Angel variation before seeing your post. But I only get to 2^^^^(2^^34). What Am I doing wrong?
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Parallel Lives, and Molten Echoes naming Dragon.
Play Astral Dragon. Astral Dragon and Molten Echoes trigger. Resolve Astral Dragon first creating 4 token copies of Parallel Lives.
Resolve Molten Echoes. 32 Astral Dragons enter the battlefield and trigger.
Trigger 1 gets us to 69 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 2 gets us to more than 2^69 > 2^16 = 2^^4 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 3 gets us to more than 2^(2^69) > 2^2^^4 = 2^^5 Parallel Lives.
...
Trigger 31 gets us to more than 2^^33 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 32 gets us to more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes, all naming Angel.
Play Restoration Angel. 2^^34 Molten Echoes trigger.
The only useful target to flicker is the original Astral Dragon, so each batch of Angel tokens only provides one useful trigger
Every time we resolve an Astral Dragon trigger we go from X Parallel Lives to more than 2^X Parallel Lives.
Every time we resolve a Molten Echoes trigger on Astral Dragon we create X Astral Dragon tokens that all trigger. So we go from X Parallel Lives to 2^^X Parallel Lives.
With the last Astral Dragon trigger before a Molten Echoes trigger on Restoration Angel we top of the Molten Echoes naming Dragon. Then every time we resolve a Molten Echoes trigger on Restoration Angel we flicker Astral Dragon and trigger X Molten Echoes. That takes us from X Parallel Lives to 2^^^X Parallel Lives.
We have a total of 2^^34 Molten Echoes trigger for Restoration Angel to resolve. That takes us to more than 2^^^^(2^^34) Parallel Lives.
The Astral Dragon tokens created by the last Molten Echoes trigger have haste and can attack for more than 2^^^^(2^^34) damage.
@Iijil: Those numbers look right. I'm wondering if that extra tetration in plopfill's estimate has something to do with the ETB trigger off of the original Angel. Not sure how that would significaly increase the estimate though.
I'm not quite sure how to get quadruple arrows off of the previous deck. 2-3 Golems destroyed gets you the mana to create a token copy of a creature (Precursor Golem being the obvious target). So a Precursor Golem trigger off of Slaughter multiples the number of Precursor Golems by a small factor, and the casting of Slaughter gives you exponentiation. Then, a little over one copy of Smiting Hex gives you the resources to recast Slaughter, so a Precursor Golem trigger off of Smiting Hex is double arrows, and casting Smiting Hex is triple arrows, and we can do the last twice. So it looks like it should be 2^^^2^^^X.
With X copies of Salvaging Station around every time we resolve a slaughter copy on a golem we get 3*X mana, which we can turn into 3/4X Salvaging Stations. So 1 Slaughter copy turns X into 7/4*X
Before resolving a Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter we instead turn that mana into Precursor Golem copies. Resolving the trigger then gets us 9/7*X Slaughter copies. Resolving all of them turns X into X*(7/4)^(9/7*X). Or with some loss of precision, we have roughly the growth rate of 2^X.
When we run out of Precursor Golem triggers on Slaughter we turn our mana into Precursor Golems again and keep a bit in reserve so that we can cast Slaughter with buyback, at the cost of 4 life. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers. So 4 life roughly turn X into 2^^X.
When we run out of life we again turn mana into Precursor Golems and resolve a Precursor Golem trigger on Smiting Hex. Resolving all the copies gets us 27/7*X life. So one of those triggers turns X into 2^^^X.
I don't think we can have any significant number of Precursor Golems when we cast Smiting Hex from hand, but hopefully we have a few before we flash it back. If we have X at the time of flashback we can turn that into 2^^^^X after resolving everything.
The last batch of mana can produce Precursor Golem copies with haste, that can attack for 2^^^^X damage.
Ah, making more copies of Salvaging Station at the lowest level, I see.
We can cast Slaughter with buyback prior to casting Smiting Hex, and be at 1 life. But, if we target a Golem, I don't see how to copy the Precursor Golem before it dies. If we target Cogwork Assembler we'll lose it before we can copy it as well. So it looks like we have to cast Smiting Hex first, with just a PG and 2 VGs.
Edit: Hmm, I can't really get off the ground with the Smiting Hex deck; I can only get 2 Precursor Golems ready for the flashback of Smiting Hex. So it doesn't look anywhere near the Restoration Angel deck.
I got away from small numbers with the Golem Slaughter hand. I think it can get about 2^^^^(2^^(2^37))) damage, apparently beating the Astral Dragon deck
Play Black Lotus, Channel. (20 life, 1 mana)
Play Salvaging Station. Tap it to return Lotus, crack for black. (1 SS, 15 life, 3 mana)
Play Cogwork Assembler and Precursor Golem. (1 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 10 life, 0 mana)
Activate Cogwork Assembler to create a Salvaging Station token. Tap it to return Lotus and crack for black. (2 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 3 life, 3 mana)
Cast Smiting Helix, targeting Precursor Golem. Create a copy for both golem tokens. (2 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 2 life, 0 mana)
Resolve the first Smiting Helix copy. Token dies, we untap 2 Salvaging Stations. Use every salvaging station untap for mana via Lotus. (2 SS, 1 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 6 mana)
Create another Salvaging station. (3 SS, 1 PG, 1 GT, 4 life, 3 mana)
Resolve the second Smiting Helix copy. Token dies, we untap 3 Salvaging Stations. (3 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 7 life, 12 mana)
Create another Salvaging station. (4 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 7 life, 8 mana)
Create a Precursor Golem copy while we still have one. (4 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 7 life, 1 mana)
Resolve the original Smiting Helix. Do the Salvaging station stuff. (4 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 10 life, 13 mana)
Create a Precursor Golem copy. (4 SS, 2 PG, 4 GT, 10 life, 6 mana)
Cast Slaughter with buyback targeting a Precursor Golem. Get 2 Precursor Golem triggers, resolve the first trigger. (4 SS, 2 PG, 4 GT, 6 life, 2 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the first Golem token. (4 SS, 2 PG, 3 GT, 6 life, 14 mana)
Create 3 Salvaging stations. (7 SS, 2 PG, 3 GT, 5 life, 3 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the next Golem token. (7 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 5 life, 24 mana)
Create 5 Salvaging stations. (12 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 5 life, 4 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the next Golem token. (12 SS, 2 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 40 mana)
Create 9 Salvaging stations. (21 SS, 2 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 4 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the last Golem token. (21 SS, 2 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 67 mana)
Create 16 Salvaging stations. (37 SS, 2 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 3 mana)
Resolve the last Slaughter copy on a Precursor Golem. (37 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 114 mana)
Create 16 Precursor Golems. (37 SS, 17 PG, 32 GT, 5 life, 2 mana)
Next resolve the second Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter.
...
We have pretty much escaped small numbers, so look at the general growth rate of our actions:
With X copies of Salvaging Station around every time we resolve a slaughter copy on a golem we get 3*X mana, which we can turn into 3/4X Salvaging Stations. So 1 Slaughter copy turns X into 7/4*X
Before resolving a Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter we instead turn that mana into Precursor Golem copies. Resolving the trigger then gets us 9/7*X Slaughter copies. Resolving all of them turns X into X*(7/4)^(9/7*X). Or with some loss of precision, we have roughly the growth rate of 2^X.
When we run out of Precursor Golem triggers on Slaughter we turn our mana into Precursor Golems again and keep a bit in reserve so that we can cast Slaughter with buyback, at the cost of 4 life. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers. So 4 life roughly turn X into 2^^X.
When we run out of life we again turn mana into Precursor Golems and resolve a Precursor Golem trigger on Smiting Hex. Resolving all the copies gets us 27/7*X life. So one of those triggers turns X into 2^^^X.
When we don't have the previous triggers yet we still turn mana into Precursor Golems and flashback Smiting Hex. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers and roughly turn X into 2^^^^X.
...
So resolving the Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter from where we left off gets us to about 2^37
Then we go to 1 life to cast Slaughter with buyback and go to 2^^(2^37)
Finally we flashback Smiting Hex to go to 2^^^^(2^^(2^37))
At the end we create a ton of Precursor Golems with haste and attack for damage.
I made a spreadsheet to play around with the starting sequence and have the life/mana/token numbers updated easily: Google doc copy
Looks good, although it looks like we get more than 2^37 Precursor Golems after the second PG trigger of the first Slaughter. I think we get about 37 * (7/4)^48 * (3/7) ~ 7.346 trillion; a little lower than that, but more than 7.2 trillion I think. So final damage should be more than 2^^^^(2^^(7.2 trillion)).
I guess there's 8 cards on the play and 8 cards on the draw; the latter is perhaps more interesting, as it has the better chance to get significantly past 7 cards.
6 up arrows sounds like a good goal, although it would be awesome to get at least 1 Ackermann combo off for maybe 8-15 arrows.
wow that's some nice tech! The salvaging station hand is the best kind of madness.
The standard version is great too, in well under 20 cards! Though I don't think anything quite works as an improvement to the multistage standard deck.
We play the first 6 cards as in the previous plopfill deck to get more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes. We then cast Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which transforms to become Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, and we get more than 2^^34 hasted copies of it. Finally we cast Urza, High Artificer, which triggers the more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes. Each Molten Echoes trigger creates many copies of Urza, which will die, but not before creating many ETB triggers. Each ETB trigger will create many Constructs, each of which can be tapped for a blue mana. This blue mana can be used to activate the Reflection of Kiki-Jikis to copy Astral Dragon. We can occasionally use Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to make copies of itself as necessary.
Each copying of Astral Dragon performs ^^. So, each Urza ETB trigger performs ^^^, and each Molten Echoes trigger off of the original Urza performs ^^^^. So, we wind up with more than 2^^^^^(2^^34) hasted creatures at the end.
We can also create more than 2^^^^^(2^^34) copies of Goblins that create Treasure tokens when they attack, but that only increases to 2^^^^(2^^^^^(2^^34)), which is an insignificant increase.
It would be nice if we could get a a flicker of an Astral Dragon for mana, so that we get Molten Echoes triggers, rather than just copying the Astral Dragon. I couldn't find anything relevant though.
Since we have Urza, we should be able to do something when we just have 7 cards drawn; but that means that Urza is cast before we can activate it to exile the final card. But, none of the other cards can be cast at instant speed.
Edit: Bah, I'm so uncareful. The Reflections can copy the Constructs to create more mana.
Astral Dragon can create a copy of a Treasure token that is a 3/3 dragon. Then Reflection of Kiki-Jiki can copy that to get a bunch of 3/3 dragon treasures with haste. So that version also goes infinite with cheap mana.
Play in order. Cackling Counterpart gets copied twice, and we have 2 PGs and 6 VGs. Cast Crimson Wisps, get two PG triggers. Resolve the first, get 7 copies of Wisps.
-First resolves and draws Ionize. Cast Ionize to counter the original WIsps. (18 life)
-Secone Wisp copy resolves and draws Cackling Counterpart.
-Cast Cackling Counterpart, getting two PG triggers. We go up to 8 PGs, and a larger number of VGs.
-Third Wisp copy resolves and draws Crimson Wisp.
-Cast Crimson Wisp, get 8 Precursor Golem triggers. Every copy of Wisp can draw Cackling Counterpart to exponentiate, so each Precursor Golem trigger tretrates on the total number of Golems. We get 8 tetrations starting at more than 4 Golems, so we wind up with more than 2^^^10 PGs.
-We get 4 more draws off of the first trigger of the very first Wisp, each one pentates, so more than 2^^^^7 PGs at the end.
Second trigger off of first Wisp resolves, we hexate again, to get more than 2^^^^2^^^^7 PGs.
We then recast WIsp and Ionize again, and now we apply ^^^^^ to the number of Precursor Golems. 2^^^^2^^^^7 > 2^^^^^^3, and each additional Ionize bumps up the last number, and we can Ionize 8 more times. So we wind up with more than 2^^^^^^11.
Does Mages' Contest work as I hope it does when we target our own spell?
"You and target spell’s controller bid life." makes it sound as if we bid only against ourself and could win to counter our spell for 1 life. That would be optimal for the 8 card deck above, getting it to 2^^^^^^21.
But "In turn order, each player may top the high bid." might mean that the opponent can jump in, even if they are not controlling the targeted spell. That would allow them to bid 20 and end the game immediately.
Either way, I'd really like to find a similarly powerful 8 card deck that doesn't require the deck to be empty.
Does Mages' Contest work as I hope it does when we target our own spell?
"You and target spell’s controller bid life." makes it sound as if we bid only against ourself and could win to counter our spell for 1 life. That would be optimal for the 8 card deck above, getting it to 2^^^^^^21.
But "In turn order, each player may top the high bid." might mean that the opponent can jump in, even if they are not controlling the targeted spell. That would allow them to bid 20 and end the game immediately.
Either way, I'd really like to find a similarly powerful 8 card deck that doesn't require the deck to be empty.
Huh, either reading makes a different part of the wording come off as nonsensical. That's odd.
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Because the former could potentially allow for a Dire-Strain Rampage targeting Treasure loop in the end step. Via putting it back in the library and using Tibalt's Trickery to cast it and bypass the sorcery speed restriction. It might not be possible to set that up, but we don't have to take that risk when we can just make sure that Trickery can only cast anything at most once.
Edit: Hmm, I think we can do even better with Caberetti Confluence instead of Mirage Phalanx. Oh, except all 3 copyings from CC happen in direct succession, and copying a hasted creature created by CC won't give the new creature haste, I don't think. Pretty close though...
Edit: I think the Mirage Phalanx gets us more than 2^^35 rather than 2^^34. We get 5 Parallel Lives after the Astral Dragon ETB trigger, then in combat we get 32 copies of Astral Dragon. The first Dragon ETB gets us 69 PLs, the second gets us 2^70 + 69 > 2^^4, and so on until the 32nd gets us > 2^^34. Then we get more than 2^^35 copies of Mirage Phalanx. This keeps it ahead of something like Twinflame, which can target all creatures.
Edit: Actually no, Twinflame is still better, since we will get 5*32 + 5 = 165 copies of Doubling Season, along with 32 new copies of Astral Dragon, so we will get more creatures in the end, but still between 2^^35 and 2^^36.
Edit: Ah no, Astral Dragon can only copy noncreature permanents, which won't have haste.
We can also use that to improve the 7 card damage record to more than 2^^^15:
Sunscorched Desert, Black Lotus, Eureka, Parallel Lives, Astral Dragon, Mirage Phalanx, Finest Hour
Play Sunscorched Desert. Opponent goes to 19. Good start!
Play Black Lotus, Eureka, put everything into play.
Pair Mirage Phalanx and Astral Dragon, use the Astral Dragon trigger to create 4 Finest Hour copies.
Go to combat, create 2 Astral Dragon copies. Use both triggers to create 4 Finest Hour copies each.
Attack with a single hasty Astral Dragon. 13 Finest Hours trigger. Exalted pumps the Dragon to 17/17. After Damage the opponent survives with 2 life.
The hasty tokens from Mirage Phalanx's ability go away at the end of combat, but the tokens created by the Astral Dragon copies stay around.
We now get 13 extra combats.
1st extra combat:
We create 2 Astral Dragon tokens. Both triggers target Parallel Lives. We go from 1 to 5 to 69 copies.
2nd extra combat:
We create 2^70 Astral Dragon tokens. All triggers target Parallel Lives. Each of them takes us from X copies of Parallel Lives to more than 2^X copies. So in total we go to more than 2^^(2^70) > 2^^(2^^4) = 2^^^4
3rd to 13th extra combat:
Every combat takes us from X Parallel Lives to more than 2^^X copies. So in the 13th extra combat we get more then 2^^^15 Parallel Lives.
13th extra combat continued:
We create more than 2^^^15 copies of Mirage Phalanx with haste and attack the opponent.
Forbidden Orchard gives the opponent a blocker, which they could use to survive a massive exalted attack. But they are not forced to block...
I think we can get a bit of mileage out of the Standard deck's starter instant like this:
2 Goldhound
3 Turntimber Symbiosis
4 Charge Through
5 Tibalt's Trickery
6 Wizard's Spellbook
7 Invoke the Winds
8 Storm the Festival
9 Dire-Strain Rampage
10 Fake Your Own Death
11 Orvar, the All-Form
12 Kaya, Geist Hunter
13 Mirror Box
14 Kairi, the Swirling Sky
15 Toralf, God of Fury
16 Slaughter Specialist
17 Ziatora, the Incinerator
I still wonder if there is something better than Mirage Phalanx in the 7 card deck - maybe an instant that can be recurred by the final card.
Use Astral Dragon to make 4 Parallel Lives, tap Kiki to make 16 Astral Dragons. 15 of them make Parallel Lives, the last one makes a bunch of Wastes for a ton of Moraug triggers. Each combat, untap Kiki, tap again for more Parallel Lives. After the last Moraug combat, wait for the second main phase, tap Kiki again, and again use the last Astral Dragon trigger to make Wastes for an even bigger number of combats the second time. Keep making more clones, do a big swing on the final combat.
Edit: Ability to multiply the Mirage Phalanxes on each combat probably outweighs this by a lot.
Aetherflux Reservoir: 15+G
Cogwork Assembler (+4): 16+G
Pay 7 to make a copy of Aetherflux Reservoir: 9+G
Parallel Lives (+5*2): 16
Pay 7 to make 2 copies of Aetherflux Reservoir: 9
Mycosynth Lattice (+6*4): 27
Pay 7 to make 2 copies of Parallel Lives: 20
Pay 7 to make 8 copies of Parallel Lives: 13
Pay 7 to make 2048 copies of Aetherflux Reservoir: 6
Creeping Renaissance (+7*2052): 14365
In response, make lots of copies of Parallel Lives, but also make some copies of Cogwork Assembler, and pay 50 life to Aetherflux Reservoir to destroy the nontoken Cogwork Assembler, so that Creeping Renaissance can return both Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus.
Each spell cast gives a tetration, and there are 5 more that can be cast (Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus, then Creeping Renaissance again, and Cogwork Assembler and Black Lotus again).
>2^^^^(2^^2^^35)>2^^^^(2^^34), unfortunately not benefiting from the extra copies of Restoration Angel because it targets.I just finished my calculations for the Molten Echoes + Restoration Angel variation before seeing your post. But I only get to 2^^^^(2^^34). What Am I doing wrong?
Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Parallel Lives, Molten Echoes, Astral Dragon, Restoration Angel
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Parallel Lives, and Molten Echoes naming Dragon.
Play Astral Dragon. Astral Dragon and Molten Echoes trigger. Resolve Astral Dragon first creating 4 token copies of Parallel Lives.
Resolve Molten Echoes. 32 Astral Dragons enter the battlefield and trigger.
Trigger 1 gets us to 69 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 2 gets us to more than 2^69 > 2^16 = 2^^4 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 3 gets us to more than 2^(2^69) > 2^2^^4 = 2^^5 Parallel Lives.
...
Trigger 31 gets us to more than 2^^33 Parallel Lives.
Trigger 32 gets us to more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes, all naming Angel.
Play Restoration Angel. 2^^34 Molten Echoes trigger.
The only useful target to flicker is the original Astral Dragon, so each batch of Angel tokens only provides one useful trigger
Every time we resolve an Astral Dragon trigger we go from X Parallel Lives to more than 2^X Parallel Lives.
Every time we resolve a Molten Echoes trigger on Astral Dragon we create X Astral Dragon tokens that all trigger. So we go from X Parallel Lives to 2^^X Parallel Lives.
With the last Astral Dragon trigger before a Molten Echoes trigger on Restoration Angel we top of the Molten Echoes naming Dragon. Then every time we resolve a Molten Echoes trigger on Restoration Angel we flicker Astral Dragon and trigger X Molten Echoes. That takes us from X Parallel Lives to 2^^^X Parallel Lives.
We have a total of 2^^34 Molten Echoes trigger for Restoration Angel to resolve. That takes us to more than 2^^^^(2^^34) Parallel Lives.
The Astral Dragon tokens created by the last Molten Echoes trigger have haste and can attack for more than 2^^^^(2^^34) damage.
I suppose for the unlimited mana challenge, we can go with Parallel Lives, Flameshadow Conjuring, Astral Dragon, and Restoration Angel, with Flameshadow Conjuring being a bit better than Molten Echoes with unlimited mana.
@Iijil: Those numbers look right. I'm wondering if that extra tetration in plopfill's estimate has something to do with the ETB trigger off of the original Angel. Not sure how that would significaly increase the estimate though.
I'm not quite sure how to get quadruple arrows off of the previous deck. 2-3 Golems destroyed gets you the mana to create a token copy of a creature (Precursor Golem being the obvious target). So a Precursor Golem trigger off of Slaughter multiples the number of Precursor Golems by a small factor, and the casting of Slaughter gives you exponentiation. Then, a little over one copy of Smiting Hex gives you the resources to recast Slaughter, so a Precursor Golem trigger off of Smiting Hex is double arrows, and casting Smiting Hex is triple arrows, and we can do the last twice. So it looks like it should be 2^^^2^^^X.
Before resolving a Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter we instead turn that mana into Precursor Golem copies. Resolving the trigger then gets us 9/7*X Slaughter copies. Resolving all of them turns X into X*(7/4)^(9/7*X). Or with some loss of precision, we have roughly the growth rate of 2^X.
When we run out of Precursor Golem triggers on Slaughter we turn our mana into Precursor Golems again and keep a bit in reserve so that we can cast Slaughter with buyback, at the cost of 4 life. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers. So 4 life roughly turn X into 2^^X.
When we run out of life we again turn mana into Precursor Golems and resolve a Precursor Golem trigger on Smiting Hex. Resolving all the copies gets us 27/7*X life. So one of those triggers turns X into 2^^^X.
I don't think we can have any significant number of Precursor Golems when we cast Smiting Hex from hand, but hopefully we have a few before we flash it back. If we have X at the time of flashback we can turn that into 2^^^^X after resolving everything.
The last batch of mana can produce Precursor Golem copies with haste, that can attack for 2^^^^X damage.
We can cast Slaughter with buyback prior to casting Smiting Hex, and be at 1 life. But, if we target a Golem, I don't see how to copy the Precursor Golem before it dies. If we target Cogwork Assembler we'll lose it before we can copy it as well. So it looks like we have to cast Smiting Hex first, with just a PG and 2 VGs.
Edit: Hmm, I can't really get off the ground with the Smiting Hex deck; I can only get 2 Precursor Golems ready for the flashback of Smiting Hex. So it doesn't look anywhere near the Restoration Angel deck.
I did not actually expect that.
Play Black Lotus, Channel. (20 life, 1 mana)
Play Salvaging Station. Tap it to return Lotus, crack for black. (1 SS, 15 life, 3 mana)
Play Cogwork Assembler and Precursor Golem. (1 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 10 life, 0 mana)
Activate Cogwork Assembler to create a Salvaging Station token. Tap it to return Lotus and crack for black. (2 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 3 life, 3 mana)
Cast Smiting Helix, targeting Precursor Golem. Create a copy for both golem tokens. (2 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 2 life, 0 mana)
Resolve the first Smiting Helix copy. Token dies, we untap 2 Salvaging Stations. Use every salvaging station untap for mana via Lotus. (2 SS, 1 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 6 mana)
Create another Salvaging station. (3 SS, 1 PG, 1 GT, 4 life, 3 mana)
Resolve the second Smiting Helix copy. Token dies, we untap 3 Salvaging Stations. (3 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 7 life, 12 mana)
Create another Salvaging station. (4 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 7 life, 8 mana)
Create a Precursor Golem copy while we still have one. (4 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 7 life, 1 mana)
Resolve the original Smiting Helix. Do the Salvaging station stuff. (4 SS, 1 PG, 2 GT, 10 life, 13 mana)
Create a Precursor Golem copy. (4 SS, 2 PG, 4 GT, 10 life, 6 mana)
Cast Slaughter with buyback targeting a Precursor Golem. Get 2 Precursor Golem triggers, resolve the first trigger. (4 SS, 2 PG, 4 GT, 6 life, 2 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the first Golem token. (4 SS, 2 PG, 3 GT, 6 life, 14 mana)
Create 3 Salvaging stations. (7 SS, 2 PG, 3 GT, 5 life, 3 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the next Golem token. (7 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 5 life, 24 mana)
Create 5 Salvaging stations. (12 SS, 2 PG, 2 GT, 5 life, 4 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the next Golem token. (12 SS, 2 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 40 mana)
Create 9 Salvaging stations. (21 SS, 2 PG, 1 GT, 5 life, 4 mana)
Resolve a Slaughter copy on the last Golem token. (21 SS, 2 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 67 mana)
Create 16 Salvaging stations. (37 SS, 2 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 3 mana)
Resolve the last Slaughter copy on a Precursor Golem. (37 SS, 1 PG, 0 GT, 5 life, 114 mana)
Create 16 Precursor Golems. (37 SS, 17 PG, 32 GT, 5 life, 2 mana)
Next resolve the second Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter.
...
We have pretty much escaped small numbers, so look at the general growth rate of our actions:
With X copies of Salvaging Station around every time we resolve a slaughter copy on a golem we get 3*X mana, which we can turn into 3/4X Salvaging Stations. So 1 Slaughter copy turns X into 7/4*X
Before resolving a Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter we instead turn that mana into Precursor Golem copies. Resolving the trigger then gets us 9/7*X Slaughter copies. Resolving all of them turns X into X*(7/4)^(9/7*X). Or with some loss of precision, we have roughly the growth rate of 2^X.
When we run out of Precursor Golem triggers on Slaughter we turn our mana into Precursor Golems again and keep a bit in reserve so that we can cast Slaughter with buyback, at the cost of 4 life. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers. So 4 life roughly turn X into 2^^X.
When we run out of life we again turn mana into Precursor Golems and resolve a Precursor Golem trigger on Smiting Hex. Resolving all the copies gets us 27/7*X life. So one of those triggers turns X into 2^^^X.
When we don't have the previous triggers yet we still turn mana into Precursor Golems and flashback Smiting Hex. That will give us 3/7*X Precursor Golem triggers and roughly turn X into 2^^^^X.
...
So resolving the Precursor Golem trigger on Slaughter from where we left off gets us to about 2^37
Then we go to 1 life to cast Slaughter with buyback and go to 2^^(2^37)
Finally we flashback Smiting Hex to go to 2^^^^(2^^(2^37))
At the end we create a ton of Precursor Golems with haste and attack for damage.
I made a spreadsheet to play around with the starting sequence and have the life/mana/token numbers updated easily: Google doc copy
If we can get to four arrows with 7 cards and get to Graham's number with 9 cards, I wonder we can do with 8 cards.
6 up arrows sounds like a good goal, although it would be awesome to get at least 1 Ackermann combo off for maybe 8-15 arrows.
The standard version is great too, in well under 20 cards! Though I don't think anything quite works as an improvement to the multistage standard deck.
We play the first 6 cards as in the previous plopfill deck to get more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes. We then cast Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which transforms to become Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, and we get more than 2^^34 hasted copies of it. Finally we cast Urza, High Artificer, which triggers the more than 2^^34 Molten Echoes. Each Molten Echoes trigger creates many copies of Urza, which will die, but not before creating many ETB triggers. Each ETB trigger will create many Constructs, each of which can be tapped for a blue mana. This blue mana can be used to activate the Reflection of Kiki-Jikis to copy Astral Dragon. We can occasionally use Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to make copies of itself as necessary.
Each copying of Astral Dragon performs ^^. So, each Urza ETB trigger performs ^^^, and each Molten Echoes trigger off of the original Urza performs ^^^^. So, we wind up with more than 2^^^^^(2^^34) hasted creatures at the end.
We can also create more than 2^^^^^(2^^34) copies of Goblins that create Treasure tokens when they attack, but that only increases to 2^^^^(2^^^^^(2^^34)), which is an insignificant increase.
It would be nice if we could get a a flicker of an Astral Dragon for mana, so that we get Molten Echoes triggers, rather than just copying the Astral Dragon. I couldn't find anything relevant though.
Since we have Urza, we should be able to do something when we just have 7 cards drawn; but that means that Urza is cast before we can activate it to exile the final card. But, none of the other cards can be cast at instant speed.
Edit: Bah, I'm so uncareful. The Reflections can copy the Constructs to create more mana.
Edit: I think if we replace Urza, Lord High Artificer with Tivit, Seller of Secrets, it should work out fine and get the damage of 2^^^^^(2^^34). We can use Astral Dragon to copy Treasure tokens, but they won't have haste.
Again, we can investigate, but we can't cast whatever we draw until the stack is clear. So again this has to be on the draw.
Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Precursor Golem, Wheel of Sun and Moon, Cackling Counterpart, Crimson Wisps and Ionize.
Play in order. Cackling Counterpart gets copied twice, and we have 2 PGs and 6 VGs. Cast Crimson Wisps, get two PG triggers. Resolve the first, get 7 copies of Wisps.
-First resolves and draws Ionize. Cast Ionize to counter the original WIsps. (18 life)
-Secone Wisp copy resolves and draws Cackling Counterpart.
-Cast Cackling Counterpart, getting two PG triggers. We go up to 8 PGs, and a larger number of VGs.
-Third Wisp copy resolves and draws Crimson Wisp.
-Cast Crimson Wisp, get 8 Precursor Golem triggers. Every copy of Wisp can draw Cackling Counterpart to exponentiate, so each Precursor Golem trigger tretrates on the total number of Golems. We get 8 tetrations starting at more than 4 Golems, so we wind up with more than 2^^^10 PGs.
-We get 4 more draws off of the first trigger of the very first Wisp, each one pentates, so more than 2^^^^7 PGs at the end.
Second trigger off of first Wisp resolves, we hexate again, to get more than 2^^^^2^^^^7 PGs.
We then recast WIsp and Ionize again, and now we apply ^^^^^ to the number of Precursor Golems. 2^^^^2^^^^7 > 2^^^^^^3, and each additional Ionize bumps up the last number, and we can Ionize 8 more times. So we wind up with more than 2^^^^^^11.
"You and target spell’s controller bid life." makes it sound as if we bid only against ourself and could win to counter our spell for 1 life. That would be optimal for the 8 card deck above, getting it to 2^^^^^^21.
But "In turn order, each player may top the high bid." might mean that the opponent can jump in, even if they are not controlling the targeted spell. That would allow them to bid 20 and end the game immediately.
Either way, I'd really like to find a similarly powerful 8 card deck that doesn't require the deck to be empty.