I think I have an 8-card deck achieving significantly more damage.
Black Lotus, sacrifice for GGG, Channel (19G available), Nature's Spiral getting back Black Lotus (18). Cast Elixir of Immortality (17) and activate it (15), gaining 5 life (20) and shuffling Channel and Nature's Spiral into the library. Recast Black Lotus and sacrifice it for blue (20UUU).
Casting Bonus Round once doubles+1 the number of active Bonus Round effects; the Jadzi triggers can cast Elixir of Immortality and Black Lotus for an adequate supply of mana.
Casting Irenicus's Vile Duplication once lets Bonus Round be cast from Jadzi triggers more times than the current Bonus Round count, for an exponentiation.
Each instant or sorcery card beyond that adds two layers, one for the Bonus Round triggers from its casting and one for the Jadzi triggers from each Bonus Round trigger. Unlike conventional layers, the cards do not have a fixed order; however, because of the way the stack works, only the cards not currently on the stack can be re-ordered, so it is still finite.
Chain Jadzi triggers into Channel, Nature's Spiral targeting Black Lotus, Irenicus's Vile Duplication, Bonus Round, and Elixir of Immortality (5R). Each time, stack the Jadzi triggers on top of the Bonus Round trigger -- except for Nature's Spiral, which should have the reverse order.
The first time Nature's Spiral is copied, refrain from activating Elixir of Immortality until the copy resolves, returning Black Lotus to hand. Discard Black Lotus to bounce the original Jadzi, then discard Jadzi to bounce one of the token copies of Jadzi -- and now, with Jadzi in the graveyard, we can add its back side, Journey to the Oracle, into the sequence.
Once everything finishes resolving, we have a big number, but unfortunately not quite big enough to show up in the final lower bound. Towards the end, use Nature's Spiral to return the Jadzi card to hand.
Cast Journey to the Oracle from hand, starting the process again, which increases the number to more than 2^^^^^^^^^^3. (Journey to the Oracle cannot be retrieved if it is the first card cast, keeping it finite.)
Cast Firecat Blitz by flashback with X=0, starting the process again, which increases the number to more than 2^^^^^^^^^^4.
Again, return the Jadzi card to hand with Nature's Spiral and cast it as Journey to the Oracle. However, because Firecat Blitz is now exiled, it's less effective. The last time Irenicus's Vile Duplication is cast, target one of the Cat tokens with haste with it and with all the copies, making more than 2^^^^^^^^^^4 more Cat tokens with haste, which finally attack.
@plopfill: Very nice! The only combo I knew of that could get layers off of arbitrary cards was the Thrumming Stone combo that you yourself mentioned; this Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios / Bonus Round combo does that one better by getting 2 layers off of each card, although it is restricted to instants and sorceries.
I'm wondering if this can be translated into a 5 card hand in the unlimited mana version. Dropping Black Lotus / Elixir of Immortality / Channel, and switching Firecat Blitz for something else, we could theoretically still get 8 arrows?
Edit: I guess we still need a way to shuffle our instant/sorceries into the library. We could do that with an instant/sorcery, but it doesn't look like one could really use that instant/sorcery to extend the recursion, since we need all 3 of shuffling into the library, Jadzi token creation, of Bonus Round increase to get the full recursion going. So maybe this doesn't beat the current6 arrow record for 5 cards with unlimited mana.
Yeah, that would be an interesting target. I did work out that, using a particular universal Waterfall machine, one can implement a Turing machine with X states using X^O(X) in total inputs, although I didn't work out effective bounds (that looks rather troublesome). But, I would think that X^(100X) is probably enough. So maybe something like a target of 10^10,000? (That is, be able to start the computation with any selection of creature types totaling some number no greater than 10^10,000.)
Since we only need to compute once, we could theoretically do without Vedalken Orrery. But, we do need to avoid having any Xathrid Necromancers on our side during the computation, so we do need to require a sweeper on our side to start the computation. Goblin Boom Keg was as convenient as any to my recollection; before we came up with that idea, we had to go through some pretty tricky setups to require us not having Necromancers. Now that I think about it though, this might be a good time for Soulblast.
Going without Vedalken Orrery will limit our ability to do recursion though, which may wind up being a difficulty in getting to 10^10,000 in the first place.
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell (count 1), Omniscience, Mind's Desire (2).
Play Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, Thousand-Year Storm, Doubling Season.
Play Astral Dragon, create 4 copies of Thousand-Year Storm.
Play Comeuppance (3). Cast Arcbond (4), respond with Cackling Counterpart (5), trigger the 5 TYSes, get 21 copies of CC total.
First CC: create 2 Astral Dragons. Go up to 5 Doubling Seasons, then 69.
Second CC create 2^69 Astra Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^(2^69) > 2^^2^^4 > 2^^^4 Doubling Seasons.
...
20th CC. Create more than 2^^^21 Astral Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^^22 Doubling Seasons, Dralnu's Crusades, Thousand-Year Storms.
21th CC. Create moore than 2^^^22 Xathrid Necromancers.
Resolve Arcbond on the creatures we want.
Cast Donate to donate all of our creatures but one Xathrid Necromancer to the opponent. Cast Artificial Evolution to switch everything to the creature types of our choice.
Cast Soulblast to start the computation; sacrifice our Xathrid Necromancer.
After the computation, cast Backlash to kill the opponent with more than BB(2^^^22) damage.
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell (count 1), Omniscience, Mind's Desire (2).
Play Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, Thousand-Year Storm, Doubling Season.
Play Astral Dragon, create 4 copies of Thousand-Year Storm.
Play Comeuppance (3). Cast Arcbond (4), respond with Cackling Counterpart (5), trigger the 5 TYSes, get 21 copies of CC total.
First CC: create 2 Astral Dragons. Go up to 5 Doubling Seasons, then 69.
Second CC create 2^69 Astra Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^(2^69) > 2^^2^^4 > 2^^^4 Doubling Seasons.
...
20th CC. Create more than 2^^^21 Astral Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^^22 Doubling Seasons, Dralnu's Crusades, Thousand-Year Storms.
21th CC. Create moore than 2^^^22 Xathrid Necromancers.
Resolve Arcbond on the creatures we want.
Cast Donate to donate all of our creatures but one Xathrid Necromancer to the opponent. Cast Artificial Evolution to switch everything to the creature types of our choice.
Cast Soulblast to start the computation; sacrifice our Xathrid Necromancer.
After the computation, cast Backlash to kill the opponent with more than BB(2^^^22) damage.
Nice!
Some concerns - do we have any way to keep the opponent from dying to Arcbond? Also, does the option to cast Backlash mid-combo mean having the potential to set up an unbounded loop and interrupt it ourselves? And it looks like this sequence only draws 4 cards from Mind's Desire, so what about the other 6?
Ah, good points. As you say, we can cast more spells and get the 5 TYSes to get enough copies of Mind's Desire. Backlash can be replaced by Kaervek's Purge.
For keeping the opponent alive, it looks like we have to add another card. (There are cards that can keep both players alive, but we really want Comeuppance to avoid asymmetry from the Arcbonds.) Any lifelink creature should work, like Archfiend's Vessel.
Hmm, we don't really need to donate anything other than creatures, so we can replace Donate by Wrong Turn, and cast Kaervek's Purge prior to casting Arcbond and Cackling Counterpart, getting 26 CCs and dealing BB(2^^^27) damage.
Ah, good points. As you say, we can cast more spells and get the 5 TYSes to get enough copies of Mind's Desire. Backlash can be replaced by Kaervek's Purge.
For keeping the opponent alive, it looks like we have to add another card. (There are cards that can keep both players alive, but we really want Comeuppance to avoid asymmetry from the Arcbonds.) Any lifelink creature should work, like Archfiend's Vessel.
Hmm, we don't really need to donate anything other than creatures, so we can replace Donate by Wrong Turn, and cast Kaervek's Purge prior to casting Arcbond and Cackling Counterpart, getting 26 CCs and dealing BB(2^^^27) damage.
Does it matter whether we use Donate vs Wrong Turn? As for sequencing, I still don't think we have a way to cast our spells in response to each other.
For a lifelink source, a spell like Call to the Feast could be beneficial for helping to contribute to TYS. That would also provide a source of tokens we can target with an X=0 Kaervek's Purge, in case using a sorcery is safer.
The problem with Donate is that we need to cast it after Cackling Counterpart, and since it's a sorcery we need the stack to be empty. With Wrong Turn, everything after Cackling Counterpart is an instant, so we can cast Kaervek's Purge and just keep it and its TYS triggers on the stack until the end. I'm not sure what the problem is with casting spells in response to each other?
Call to the Feast looks good, that should increase the damage to BB(2^^^32).
The problem with Donate is that we need to cast it after Cackling Counterpart, and since it's a sorcery we need the stack to be empty. With Wrong Turn, everything after Cackling Counterpart is an instant, so we can cast Kaervek's Purge and just keep it and its TYS triggers on the stack until the end. I'm not sure what the problem is with casting spells in response to each other?
Call to the Feast looks good, that should increase the damage to BB(2^^^32).
Oh, I misremembered how Mind's Desire works. I'd thought it was one of the effects where you have to cast the card immediately, but you can do it anytime that turn. That works then!
We could perhaps cut down to 17 cards, if we could use a card that served multiple purposes. Giving lifelink and drawing cards might be a good combination, or one of those two plus dealing damage perhaps.
Azorius Charm would be good if we could somehow get more than one mode, but we would need to recycle it to do that I think. Griselbrand seems intriguing, but drawing 7 cards is not enough, whereas drawing 14 cards means we would have to mulligan down to 3, too little. There's a similar problem with Wedding Invitation; if we use Astral Dragon on it with Doubling Season in play, drawing 9 total is not enough, whereas drawing 13 means mulliganing down to 4, and again we don't really have enough juice in the start. We could try mulliganing to 6 and drawing 11 by using Astral Dragon on Wedding Invitation without Doubling Season:
1st CC: Create Astral Dragon, go up to 5 Doubling Seasons.
2nd CC: Create 32 Astral Dragons, go up to more than 2^^32 Doubling Seasons, create 2^^33 Dralnu's Crusades and Thousand-Year Storms.
We could just get a whole bunch of WI triggers, and try to kill the opponent before they go off. But that means we need an instant speed kill, which we could use to stop a nonterminating computation.
We could perhaps cut down to 17 cards, if we could use a card that served multiple purposes. Giving lifelink and drawing cards might be a good combination, or one of those two plus dealing damage perhaps.
Azorius Charm would be good if we could somehow get more than one mode, but we would need to recycle it to do that I think. Griselbrand seems intriguing, but drawing 7 cards is not enough, whereas drawing 14 cards means we would have to mulligan down to 3, too little. There's a similar problem with Wedding Invitation; if we use Astral Dragon on it with Doubling Season in play, drawing 9 total is not enough, whereas drawing 13 means mulliganing down to 4, and again we don't really have enough juice in the start. We could try mulliganing to 6 and drawing 11 by using Astral Dragon on Wedding Invitation without Doubling Season:
1st CC: Create Astral Dragon, go up to 5 Doubling Seasons.
2nd CC: Create 32 Astral Dragons, go up to more than 2^^32 Doubling Seasons, create 2^^33 Dralnu's Crusades and Thousand-Year Storms.
We could just get a whole bunch of WI triggers, and try to kill the opponent before they go off. But that means we need an instant speed kill, which we could use to stop a nonterminating computation.
Hmm, that's tricky.
For at least increasing the damage with 18 cards, I think we could open up some more options by using Apex of Power over Mind's Desire? That would give us a bunch of mana, which we could use to flashback Cackling Counterpart. This could also make Hungry for More into a more effective lifelink source.
I think Emergency Powers could be even more powerful, to reuse our instants as many times as we can copy it.
TYS #1 copies Stratagem once, flickering Astral Dragon to make four Primal Vigor, and drawing Comeuppance. Play Comeuppance so TYS #2-5 each copy Stratagem twice, once flickering Astral Dragon and once targeting nothing. Between those and the original Stratagem, we draw our remaining nine cards and flicker Astral Dragon four more times. Target Primal Vigor three times, going 5 > 69 > 2^70 > 2^2^70, and use the fourth one to make 2^2^2^70 copies of TYS.
Unfortunately, Thousand-Year Storm says "copy it for each instant and sorcery spell cast before it", so we can't increase the number of times TYS copies by casting spells after the initial cast. (which is really a shame, because otherwise we could get two layers from TYS in general, but with the way it's worded we only get one) Looks like you're on to something though!
Unfortunately, Thousand-Year Storm says "copy it for each instant and sorcery spell cast before it", so we can't increase the number of times TYS copies by casting spells after the initial cast. (which is really a shame, because otherwise we could get two layers from TYS in general, but with the way it's worded we only get one) Looks like you're on to something though!
Ah, good point.
I was going to suggest we could solve it by using Griselbrand as our lifelink source, but giving him to the opponent would let them deck themselves. Wonder if there's something else we can do with that slot.
1st TYS trigger:
-destroy Wedding Invitation, giving the opponent two copies
-destroy Astral Dragon, giving the opponent two copies. The opponent can choose what to copy, but nothing can hurt us. If they copy Wedding Invitation twice, they will draw a total of 10 cards, which will be safe, assuming they start with at least a 17 card deck.
-doesn't matter, can let this fizzle
2nd TYS trigger:
-Wedding Invitation, create two copies on our side and draw two cards
-Wedding Invitation again
-Astral Dragon, creating two copies
--copy Primal Vigor, create 4 copies, up to 5
--copy Primal Vigor, create 64 copies, up to 69
25th TYS trigger
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^70 copies
-opponent's Astral Dragon, create more than 2^^71 copies. Copy Primal Vigor 2^^71 times, going up to 2^^2^^71 Primal Vigors
-Xathrid Necromancer
original spell
-Dralnu's Crusade
Cast Arcbond, Artifical Evolution. Tap one or more Wedding Invitations to give some Arcbonded creatures lifelink. Cast Soulblast to do the computation, and finish off with Kaervek's Purge to deal more than BB(2^^2^^71) damage.
I think Sublime Epiphany could be more effective than Illusionist's Stratagem? It can make tokens while drawing cards, and use the bounce mode to help us fizzle as necessary. (Destroying some tokens in the process.)
For the sequence, maybe having Wedding Invitation in our opening hand could be helpful for letting us use a couple of early Astral Dragon triggers on it and then start hitting Primal Vigor sooner?
Hitting Primal Vigor early sounds good, but I think it actually winds up with less damage in the end, since pumping up Primal Vigor also prevents us from sending Astral Dragons over to the opponent so that we can get them back to our side, since the opponent can copy Wedding Invitations to deck themselves.
Ooh, Sublime Epiphany looks good. It's too bad we can't change modes, and just not draw a card on one of the copies; so we still neeed to fizzle one copy. Still, creating tokens can be a lot better than flickering, so in this case getting Primal Vigor going early may actually be better.
Hitting Primal Vigor early sounds good, but I think it actually winds up with less damage in the end, since pumping up Primal Vigor also prevents us from sending Astral Dragons over to the opponent so that we can get them back to our side, since the opponent can copy Wedding Invitations to deck themselves.
Ooh, Sublime Epiphany looks good. It's too bad we can't change modes, and just not draw a card on one of the copies; so we still neeed to fizzle one copy. Still, creating tokens can be a lot better than flickering, so in this case getting Primal Vigor going early may actually be better.
I guess the timing of copying Primal Vigor depends on whether it's more beneficial to go Dragon > Vigor on the Epiphany round or the Fractured Identity round.
Hmm, we can bounce and replay Wedding Invitation, but only once I think, since we don't have anything to give it flash. So we would neeed to make two copies of Wedding Invitation. We could do so by using the initial [c}Astral Dragon[/c] to copy it without Primal Vigor - but then, we don't copy TYS, so we'll only get one TYS trigger when we cast Sublime Epiphany, which doesn't seem good. Alternatively, we don't cast Primal Vigor prior to casting Sublime Epiphany, but that doesn't seem good either.
1st TYS trigger:
-Bounce the original TYS
-Make two token copies of Astral Dragon
--Create 4 token copies of Wedding Invitation, drawing 4 cards
--Create 4 token copies of Primal Vigor, up to 5 total
-draw a card
2nd TYS trigger:
-Bounce the original Astral Dragon
-Make 32 copies of Astral Dragon token
--create 64, 2^70, 2^2^70 > 2^^5, ..., >2^^33 copies of Primal Vigor
-draw a card
3rd TYS trigger:
-Bounce an Astral Dragon token
-Make >2^^34 copies of Astral Dragon token
--create more than 2^^2^^34 copies of Primal Vigor
-draw a card
After the 5th TYS trigger, we will have created more than 2^^2^^2^^2^^34 > 2^^^6 copies of Primal Vigor. The original Sublime Epiphany fizzles.
Replay TYS and Astral Dragon, getting more than 2^^^6 copies of TYS.
Most of them will target Primal Vigors, increasing their number to more than 2^^^7. We will also target Xathrid Necromancer and Dralnu's Crusade, giving the opponent more than 2^^^7 copies of each.
Cast Arcbond, Artifical Evolution. Tap one or more Wedding Invitations to give some Arcbonded creatures lifelink. Cast Soulblast to do the computation, and finish off with Kaervek's Purge to deal more than BB(2^^^7) damage.
I was hoping we could use all of our Wedding Invitations to give creatures lifelink, and then we could use our FI copies to make copies of Astral Dragons, perhaps getting to 2^^^2^^^6. But, we can't actually give creatures lifelink until we cast Artificial Evolution to turn some creatures into Vampires (or change Wedding Invitation). And after all the Artificial Evolutions resolve, further copies of Fractured Identity won't give us a better BB bound, since we won't be getting arbitrary creature types.
We could try to put activations of Wedding Invitation on the stack, and cast Artificial Evolution before they resolve. But, this only helps if we put the Wedding Invitations on the stack beneath Fractured Identity, so that we can cast Artifical Evolution after Fractured Identity fully resolves. But, then we can only target our own creatures, and we can't donate our creatures to the opponent, only create new ones.
One thing that could be helpful later on is having a couple of late instances of Fractured Identity give TYS to the opponent and then take it back, to get a larger number of Artificial Evolution uses. Not sure if this affects the math at all.
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Black Lotus, sacrifice for GGG, Channel (19G available), Nature's Spiral getting back Black Lotus (18). Cast Elixir of Immortality (17) and activate it (15), gaining 5 life (20) and shuffling Channel and Nature's Spiral into the library. Recast Black Lotus and sacrifice it for blue (20UUU).
Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios (14U). Cast Irenicus's Vile Duplication (11) targeting Jadzi, chaining Jadzi triggers to cast Nature's Spiral targeting Black Lotus, Bonus Round, and Elixir of Immortality (8). Let them all resolve.
Activate Elixir of Immortality (6); gain 5 life (11) and shuffle the graveyard back in. Cast Black Lotus and sacrifice it for red (11RRR).
Cast Firecat Blitz with X=1 (10R)...
- Casting Bonus Round once doubles+1 the number of active Bonus Round effects; the Jadzi triggers can cast Elixir of Immortality and Black Lotus for an adequate supply of mana.
- Casting Irenicus's Vile Duplication once lets Bonus Round be cast from Jadzi triggers more times than the current Bonus Round count, for an exponentiation.
- Each instant or sorcery card beyond that adds two layers, one for the Bonus Round triggers from its casting and one for the Jadzi triggers from each Bonus Round trigger. Unlike conventional layers, the cards do not have a fixed order; however, because of the way the stack works, only the cards not currently on the stack can be re-ordered, so it is still finite.
Chain Jadzi triggers into Channel, Nature's Spiral targeting Black Lotus, Irenicus's Vile Duplication, Bonus Round, and Elixir of Immortality (5R). Each time, stack the Jadzi triggers on top of the Bonus Round trigger -- except for Nature's Spiral, which should have the reverse order.The first time Nature's Spiral is copied, refrain from activating Elixir of Immortality until the copy resolves, returning Black Lotus to hand. Discard Black Lotus to bounce the original Jadzi, then discard Jadzi to bounce one of the token copies of Jadzi -- and now, with Jadzi in the graveyard, we can add its back side, Journey to the Oracle, into the sequence.
Once everything finishes resolving, we have a big number, but unfortunately not quite big enough to show up in the final lower bound. Towards the end, use Nature's Spiral to return the Jadzi card to hand.
Cast Journey to the Oracle from hand, starting the process again, which increases the number to more than 2^^^^^^^^^^3. (Journey to the Oracle cannot be retrieved if it is the first card cast, keeping it finite.)
Cast Firecat Blitz by flashback with X=0, starting the process again, which increases the number to more than 2^^^^^^^^^^4.
Again, return the Jadzi card to hand with Nature's Spiral and cast it as Journey to the Oracle. However, because Firecat Blitz is now exiled, it's less effective. The last time Irenicus's Vile Duplication is cast, target one of the Cat tokens with haste with it and with all the copies, making more than 2^^^^^^^^^^4 more Cat tokens with haste, which finally attack.
I'm wondering if this can be translated into a 5 card hand in the unlimited mana version. Dropping Black Lotus / Elixir of Immortality / Channel, and switching Firecat Blitz for something else, we could theoretically still get 8 arrows?
Edit: I guess we still need a way to shuffle our instant/sorceries into the library. We could do that with an instant/sorcery, but it doesn't look like one could really use that instant/sorcery to extend the recursion, since we need all 3 of shuffling into the library, Jadzi token creation, of Bonus Round increase to get the full recursion going. So maybe this doesn't beat the current6 arrow record for 5 cards with unlimited mana.
I wonder how many cards it would take to get a meaningful Busy Beaver computation. What would be a good damage target for that?
Since we only need to compute once, we could theoretically do without Vedalken Orrery. But, we do need to avoid having any Xathrid Necromancers on our side during the computation, so we do need to require a sweeper on our side to start the computation. Goblin Boom Keg was as convenient as any to my recollection; before we came up with that idea, we had to go through some pretty tricky setups to require us not having Necromancers. Now that I think about it though, this might be a good time for Soulblast.
Going without Vedalken Orrery will limit our ability to do recursion though, which may wind up being a difficulty in getting to 10^10,000 in the first place.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artifical Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Soulblast
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Doubling Season
11 Astral Dragon
13 Show and Tell
14 Omniscience
15 Mind's Desire
16 Cackling Counterpart
17 Backlash
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell (count 1), Omniscience, Mind's Desire (2).
Play Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, Thousand-Year Storm, Doubling Season.
Play Astral Dragon, create 4 copies of Thousand-Year Storm.
Play Comeuppance (3). Cast Arcbond (4), respond with Cackling Counterpart (5), trigger the 5 TYSes, get 21 copies of CC total.
First CC: create 2 Astral Dragons. Go up to 5 Doubling Seasons, then 69.
Second CC create 2^69 Astra Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^(2^69) > 2^^2^^4 > 2^^^4 Doubling Seasons.
...
20th CC. Create more than 2^^^21 Astral Dragons. Go up to more than 2^^^22 Doubling Seasons, Dralnu's Crusades, Thousand-Year Storms.
21th CC. Create moore than 2^^^22 Xathrid Necromancers.
Resolve Arcbond on the creatures we want.
Cast Donate to donate all of our creatures but one Xathrid Necromancer to the opponent. Cast Artificial Evolution to switch everything to the creature types of our choice.
Cast Soulblast to start the computation; sacrifice our Xathrid Necromancer.
After the computation, cast Backlash to kill the opponent with more than BB(2^^^22) damage.
Some concerns - do we have any way to keep the opponent from dying to Arcbond? Also, does the option to cast Backlash mid-combo mean having the potential to set up an unbounded loop and interrupt it ourselves? And it looks like this sequence only draws 4 cards from Mind's Desire, so what about the other 6?
Two of those might take care of each other - if we have a starting hand of Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Thousand-Year Storm, Doubling Season, Astral Dragon, and Mind's Desire, we could copy Mind's Desire more times to hit all our other cards, and then we'd have to have Backlash wait for after the Soulblast triggers finish. (Although this would mean being unable to cast Cackling Counterpart in response to Arcbond, which would mean only 16 CCs.)
For keeping the opponent alive, it looks like we have to add another card. (There are cards that can keep both players alive, but we really want Comeuppance to avoid asymmetry from the Arcbonds.) Any lifelink creature should work, like Archfiend's Vessel.
Hmm, we don't really need to donate anything other than creatures, so we can replace Donate by Wrong Turn, and cast Kaervek's Purge prior to casting Arcbond and Cackling Counterpart, getting 26 CCs and dealing BB(2^^^27) damage.
For a lifelink source, a spell like Call to the Feast could be beneficial for helping to contribute to TYS. That would also provide a source of tokens we can target with an X=0 Kaervek's Purge, in case using a sorcery is safer.
Call to the Feast looks good, that should increase the damage to BB(2^^^32).
Azorius Charm would be good if we could somehow get more than one mode, but we would need to recycle it to do that I think. Griselbrand seems intriguing, but drawing 7 cards is not enough, whereas drawing 14 cards means we would have to mulligan down to 3, too little. There's a similar problem with Wedding Invitation; if we use Astral Dragon on it with Doubling Season in play, drawing 9 total is not enough, whereas drawing 13 means mulliganing down to 4, and again we don't really have enough juice in the start. We could try mulliganing to 6 and drawing 11 by using Astral Dragon on Wedding Invitation without Doubling Season:
Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Wedding Invitation drawing a card, Astral Dragon creating 2 Wedding Invitations and drawing two cards, Doubling Season, Thousand-Year Storm, Dralnu's Crusade, respond with Cackling Couterpart, getting 2 copies.
1st CC: Create Astral Dragon, go up to 5 Doubling Seasons.
2nd CC: Create 32 Astral Dragons, go up to more than 2^^32 Doubling Seasons, create 2^^33 Dralnu's Crusades and Thousand-Year Storms.
which is good for that, but we don't have Xathrid Necromancers...
We could just get a whole bunch of WI triggers, and try to kill the opponent before they go off. But that means we need an instant speed kill, which we could use to stop a nonterminating computation.
For at least increasing the damage with 18 cards, I think we could open up some more options by using Apex of Power over Mind's Desire? That would give us a bunch of mana, which we could use to flashback Cackling Counterpart. This could also make Hungry for More into a more effective lifelink source.
I think Emergency Powers could be even more powerful, to reuse our instants as many times as we can copy it.
Edit: Could Emergency Powers or Echo of Eons be enough to hit the needed numbers without Doubling Season? With Echo of Eons, we could reuse Black Lotus for the flashback.
Is there a way we could keep ourselves from interrupting the computation if we started it with Prepare // Fight?
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Soulblast
9 Thousand-Year Storm
10 Primal Vigor
11 Astral Dragon
13 Show and Tell
14 Omniscience
15 Illusionist's Stratagem
16 Call to the Feast
17 Kaervek's Purge
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Primal Vigor, and Thousand-Year Storm. Play Astral Dragon, making four more TYS. Play Illusionist's Stratagem, targeting nothing, and triggering all five TYS.
TYS #1 copies Stratagem once, flickering Astral Dragon to make four Primal Vigor, and drawing Comeuppance. Play Comeuppance so TYS #2-5 each copy Stratagem twice, once flickering Astral Dragon and once targeting nothing. Between those and the original Stratagem, we draw our remaining nine cards and flicker Astral Dragon four more times. Target Primal Vigor three times, going 5 > 69 > 2^70 > 2^2^70, and use the fourth one to make 2^2^2^70 copies of TYS.
Play Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, and Call to the Feast. Then play Fractured Identity, triggering every TYS. Most instances will target Primal Vigor, but we'll also want to hit Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, and a Vampire token. Once the opponent has what we need, we can play Arcbond and Artificial Evolution to finish our setup, and play Soulblast to activate it. Finish with Kaervek's Purge.
I was going to suggest we could solve it by using Griselbrand as our lifelink source, but giving him to the opponent would let them deck themselves. Wonder if there's something else we can do with that slot.
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Primal Vigor, and Thousand-Year Storm. Play Astral Dragon, make 4 token copies of TYS. Play Illusionist's Strategem, triggering all five TYS.
Each TYS copies Strategem, flickering Astral Dragon, and creating four more token copies of TYS. We draw 5 cards. The original Strategem fizzles.
We play Wedding Invitation, Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, Comeuppance, and Coat of Arms. Play Fractured Identity triggering all 25 TYSes.
1st TYS trigger:
-destroy Wedding Invitation, giving the opponent two copies
-destroy Astral Dragon, giving the opponent two copies. The opponent can choose what to copy, but nothing can hurt us. If they copy Wedding Invitation twice, they will draw a total of 10 cards, which will be safe, assuming they start with at least a 17 card deck.
-doesn't matter, can let this fizzle
2nd TYS trigger:
-Wedding Invitation, create two copies on our side and draw two cards
-Wedding Invitation again
-Astral Dragon, creating two copies
--copy Primal Vigor, create 4 copies, up to 5
--copy Primal Vigor, create 64 copies, up to 69
3rd TYS trigger:
-Primal Vigor, create 2^69 copies
-Primal Vigor, create 2^2^69 > 2^^5 copies
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^6 copies
...
24th TYS trigger
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^67 copies
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^68 copies
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^69 copies
25th TYS trigger
-Primal Vigor, create 2^^70 copies
-opponent's Astral Dragon, create more than 2^^71 copies. Copy Primal Vigor 2^^71 times, going up to 2^^2^^71 Primal Vigors
-Xathrid Necromancer
original spell
-Dralnu's Crusade
Cast Arcbond, Artifical Evolution. Tap one or more Wedding Invitations to give some Arcbonded creatures lifelink. Cast Soulblast to do the computation, and finish off with Kaervek's Purge to deal more than BB(2^^2^^71) damage.
I think Sublime Epiphany could be more effective than Illusionist's Stratagem? It can make tokens while drawing cards, and use the bounce mode to help us fizzle as necessary. (Destroying some tokens in the process.)
For the sequence, maybe having Wedding Invitation in our opening hand could be helpful for letting us use a couple of early Astral Dragon triggers on it and then start hitting Primal Vigor sooner?
Ooh, Sublime Epiphany looks good. It's too bad we can't change modes, and just not draw a card on one of the copies; so we still neeed to fizzle one copy. Still, creating tokens can be a lot better than flickering, so in this case getting Primal Vigor going early may actually be better.
I guess the timing of copying Primal Vigor depends on whether it's more beneficial to go Dragon > Vigor on the Epiphany round or the Fractured Identity round.
A possible sequence of play:
Play Black Lotus, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Primal Vigor, Wedding Invitation (drawing a card), and Thousand-Year Storm. Play Astral Dragon, creating four token copies of TYS. Play Sublime Epiphany to bounce Astral Dragon, create a token copy of Astral Dragon, and draw a card. This triggers the 5 TYSes.
1st TYS trigger:
-Bounce the original TYS
-Make two token copies of Astral Dragon
--Create 4 token copies of Wedding Invitation, drawing 4 cards
--Create 4 token copies of Primal Vigor, up to 5 total
-draw a card
2nd TYS trigger:
-Bounce the original Astral Dragon
-Make 32 copies of Astral Dragon token
--create 64, 2^70, 2^2^70 > 2^^5, ..., >2^^33 copies of Primal Vigor
-draw a card
3rd TYS trigger:
-Bounce an Astral Dragon token
-Make >2^^34 copies of Astral Dragon token
--create more than 2^^2^^34 copies of Primal Vigor
-draw a card
After the 5th TYS trigger, we will have created more than 2^^2^^2^^2^^34 > 2^^^6 copies of Primal Vigor. The original Sublime Epiphany fizzles.
Replay TYS and Astral Dragon, getting more than 2^^^6 copies of TYS.
We play Xathrid Necromancer, Dralnu's Crusade, Comeuppance, and Coat of Arms. Play Fractured Identity triggering all >2^^^6 copies of TYS.
Most of them will target Primal Vigors, increasing their number to more than 2^^^7. We will also target Xathrid Necromancer and Dralnu's Crusade, giving the opponent more than 2^^^7 copies of each.
Cast Arcbond, Artifical Evolution. Tap one or more Wedding Invitations to give some Arcbonded creatures lifelink. Cast Soulblast to do the computation, and finish off with Kaervek's Purge to deal more than BB(2^^^7) damage.
I was hoping we could use all of our Wedding Invitations to give creatures lifelink, and then we could use our FI copies to make copies of Astral Dragons, perhaps getting to 2^^^2^^^6. But, we can't actually give creatures lifelink until we cast Artificial Evolution to turn some creatures into Vampires (or change Wedding Invitation). And after all the Artificial Evolutions resolve, further copies of Fractured Identity won't give us a better BB bound, since we won't be getting arbitrary creature types.
We could try to put activations of Wedding Invitation on the stack, and cast Artificial Evolution before they resolve. But, this only helps if we put the Wedding Invitations on the stack beneath Fractured Identity, so that we can cast Artifical Evolution after Fractured Identity fully resolves. But, then we can only target our own creatures, and we can't donate our creatures to the opponent, only create new ones.
One thing that could be helpful later on is having a couple of late instances of Fractured Identity give TYS to the opponent and then take it back, to get a larger number of Artificial Evolution uses. Not sure if this affects the math at all.