So, it looks like the idea is that, when we transition down, we are required to phase out our current creatures. Then, on the transition up, we can phase out the creatures from the lower stage - I guess this can be voluntary, since we would be worse off if we didn't. (but we probably have to be careful about this.)
What happens when we go through two or more transitions? So let's say we have a bunch of creatures in the current stage, call them group A. We transition up, and use an Out of Time A to phase out group A. We create more creatures, group B. We transition up again. We'll want to animate Out of Time A, and play Out of Time B to phase out group B and Out of Time A, bringing back group A. We can now create group C. We then transition back down, and are forced to play out of time C, phasing out groups A and C. We'll want to have animated Out of Time B, so that group B comes back. But, if we transition down again, we can animate and phase out Out of Time C, and bring back not only group A but also group C, which can be nonempty if we so choose. So it doesn't look like this works. (unless you had another scheme in mind)
Phasing out an Out of Time doesn't cause its creatures to come back, since it's technically still on the battlefield.
If Out of Time happens to be a creature when its enter the battlefield trigger resolves, it will phase out along with all other creatures. You'll never remove the last counter since it's phased out, so all creatures will remain phased out indefinitely. (2021-06-18)
Phasing is weird!
Looks like some creature-specific sweepers that give potentially relevant resources are Shatter the Sky, Oversimplify, Whiptongue Hydra, and Fumigate. Getting use out of them would require getting some creatures back out after playing Out of Time, though.
If the phased-out creatures don't come back, then I don't see how this can work to make a Saw in Half hyperstage. Time and Tide will bring all the phased out creatures back, but that's not selective enough.
If the phased-out creatures don't come back, then I don't see how this can work to make a Saw in Half hyperstage. Time and Tide will bring all the phased out creatures back, but that's not selective enough.
They do come back eventually the way we're using it, they only get stuck if Out of Time makes itself phase out. The ruling is just relevant because it confirms that phasing it out doesn't cause the affected cards to come back.
So if Time A phases out group A, then Time B phases out Time A and group B, and Time C phases out Time B and group C, then we can remove Time C to bring Time B and group C back, and then we can remove Time B to bring Time A and group B back, etc.
Zur, Eternal Schemer is convenient since he makes the stage movement cost white mana, although I'm not sure if there's a way to tie moving back to earlier stages to getting that mana back. If there is a way to make it work, one nice thing about using Copy Enchantment is that it allows Astral Dragon to make noncreature copies of Doubling Season, so they can survive through creature sweepers.
Edit: Rather than going back to earlier stages by spending more white mana to animate it again, maybe we could use an enchantment sweeper that recovers the resource somehow?
Yeah, perhaps; it also may be a good idea to sweep creatures as well, to incentivize us to phase out our creatures rather than keeping them around. Kaervek's Spite is a possibility, although if we want something less destructive to make recovery easier, maybe Akroma's Vengeance, or All is Dust?
Hmm. Regardless of the sweeper we use, I think phasing would mean also being able to protect later stage creatures while returning to an earlier stage. So maybe that's not workable, unless there's a way to limit our access to non-creature Out of Time tokens.
I guess this sort of depth tracking is also the mechanism behind non-Toralf/Saw stages? I wonder what it would take to get access to easier hyperstages the way those two cards can do stages.
Edit: Maybe we could replace Copy Enchantment with Replication Technique, so we need to spend blue mana to make non-creature Out of Time tokens? Although that would mean we would need a way to get back Astral Dragon after a sweeper that doesn't involve either casting it normally or using Omniscience.
Really the only depth tracking in the other hyperstages is the hyperstage resource going down as you go up the stages; there's nothing like the layers of phased-out creatures that you are investigating, we just sweep away the stage resources every transition. Not sure if this answers your question.
Hmm, so does having to spend blue mana to make non-creature Out of Time tokens prevent us from phasing out creatures from a higher stage and getting them back in the lower stage? I'm a bit lost with the limiting factors.
Really the only depth tracking in the other hyperstages is the hyperstage resource going down as you go up the stages; there's nothing like the layers of phased-out creatures that you are investigating, we just sweep away the stage resources every transition. Not sure if this answers your question.
Hmm, so does having to spend blue mana to make non-creature Out of Time tokens prevent us from phasing out creatures from a higher stage and getting them back in the lower stage? I'm a bit lost with the limiting factors.
I don't mean the phasing specifically, just having some way to tag a fixed number to the objects involved - whether that's a stage/hyperstage/megastage resource, or the damage/stat values with Toralf/Saw.
My thinking is that we could do something like, use life as the hyperstage resource and link that to white and blue mana access with something like Adarkar Wastes. In that case, tucking away a previous stage would require using 1 life to have Zur animate the previous Out of Time, then another 1 life to use Replication Technique to make a noncreature copy that could safely phase out the previous ones. Trying to phase out creatures from a higher phase to bring them back in a lower phase would require spending additional life to use Replication Technique an extra time.
Edit: To get back that 2 life when moving backwards, maybe Forsaken Monument + All Is Dust? That would mean being unable to haste-gate any colorless tokens created by Astral Dragon, since they'd start at 5/5, but I think we can handle that.
Oh, this is starting to look like it can work. Note that we could also just use white and blue mana as our hyperstage mana, and we could recycle Mox Pearl + Mox Sapphire, or a white land and a blue land. But, your All is Dust plan looks good.
Kiss of the Amesha gets copied five times to draw our remaining 12 carda and gain 42 life, although there might be options to get more life out of something like Resupply. Scribe of the Mindful is our stage creature, with Bhaal, Lord of Murder giving it +1/+1 counters every time a nontoken creature dies.
If this works, I'm sure there's room to compress it further.
I wanted to use a shockland like Godless Shrine for a cleaner white mana source, but the fact that Out of Time untaps the phased-out creatures meant that wasn't viable.
Edit: Wait, Bhaal doesn't vary the number of +1/+1 counter granting instances.
Swap out Bhaal for Archangel of Thune? The +1/+1 counter distributing goes on the stack in response to the lifegain, then the stage plays out between that and resolution. Number of Archangels depends on storm count.
Edit: Bigger problem - I don't think we're using up anything from the earlier stage that the later stage can't replace. I'm not sure the phasing strategy can actually get around this. Out of Time is even untapping the earlier stage's Scribes.
Edit: Paleoloth tokens can loop the original, although the fact that each Scribe of the Mindful has to sacrifice itself means untapping doesn't allow us to reuse them anyway.
Edit: Wait, using the Forsaken Monument trigger means All Is Dust is stuck on the stack. This is bringing in all the same problems as the Toralf version.
I feel like just using Toralf is probably more efficient.
Ah, it looks like Kaervek's Spite is not copied, since sacrifices are made before the spell is officially cast. Good eye.
Yeah, the sequence here backs that up.
601.2h The player pays the total cost. First, they pay all costs that don’t involve random elements or
moving objects from the library to a public zone, in any order. Then they pay all remaining
costs in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.
Example: You cast Altar’s Reap, which costs {1}{B} and has an additional cost of
sacrificing a creature. You sacrifice Thunderscape Familiar, whose effect makes your
black spells cost {1} less to cast. Because a spell’s total cost is “locked in” before
payments are actually made, you pay {B}, not {1}{B}, even though you’re sacrificing the
Familiar.
601.2i Once the steps described in 601.2a–h are completed, effects that modify the characteristics of
the spell as it’s cast are applied, then the spell becomes cast. Any abilities that trigger when a
spell is cast or put onto the stack trigger at this time. If the spell’s controller had priority before
casting it, they get priority.
This makes it easier to use Kaervek's Spite to recover life. We can run Darksteel Colossus and have the only way for it to get back into our library is discarding it, so that a use of Kaervek's Spite allows one more casting of Resupply to get back the 1 life from Zur and the 5 life from hitting ourselves with Spite.
If it's fine for successive stages to just increase the +1/+1 counter count rather than the number of +1/+1 counter instances, I think we could do this:
With Doubling Season out, Oversimplify and Fate Transfer increase in power every time Thousand-Year Storm copies them. Fate Transfer avoids going infinite by taking away all the counters from its source, so we can increase the size of our counter stack but can't spread them out further, and we'll need to consume all the counters on a creature to start a Saw in Half chain.
(To use Oversimplify effectively, we'll need to kill our creatures and get them back to our hand before an Out of Time use, then once again play/kill/return them to make sure we just have tokens out when playing Oversimplify, then replay them to make use of the new counter batches.)
Edit: Not requiring life to cast the board wipe seems like a problem, it could be too easy to just loop it infinitely and build up storm count (and higher +1/+1 counter counts). Hythonia the Cruel could help but that would change the life costs needed.
Also Resupply would inevitably get copied by TYS, so that's a problem too.
Our phased-out permanents come back in time to respond to Kaervek's Spite, so we can counter it with Mystic Snake tokens. Although that could mean the phased-out TYS copies do trigger, so we'd probably need to cast Saw on Mystic Snake once for every TYS. But using Saw in Half on one 9-power Scribe of the Mindful will give more than enough recursion for that.
Edit: I don't think this start works. More importantly, with some of the life payment is moved to Hythonia, there's nothing stopping us from just running the Kaervek's Spite part back and forth to accumulate life that way. But without a life payment involved with the board wipe, we can loop that part. I get the idea this implies needing two hyperstage resources, one for each direction, which sounds like a huge mess.
Yeah, the more complicated the setup is, the more places for things to go wrong. (As we found out in our very complicated hyperstages for our gigastage attempts)
Hopefully I'll have more time to focus on this soon. (As well as finish the way-late Standard deck writeup)
For each TYS trigger, point one of the Revivals at Benevolent Offering and replay it. When resolving a chain of Offerings, as long as there's at least 4 instances left in the current round, dump any life gained into Cogwork Assembler to get more life back by the time the chain resolves, then use the life from the final rounds to make more TYS copies for the next round. Use extra Revivals to pick up our artifacts.
Once the stack empties, replay Wedding Invitation to draw True Polymorph, and use it to turn as many extra creatures as possible into TYS copies. Sacrifice Invitation and Black Lotus again, then flashback Dryad's Revival, letting all the TYS copies trigger. This time, have all the rounds of Revivals incorporate True Polymorph alongside Benevolent Offering.
With True Polymorph and at least one TYS trigger from it on the stack, use Kaervek's Spite to run a computation. When it finishes, rather than pointing extra Ember-Fist Zubera triggers at the opponent, make sure that they had lifelink and are pointed at ceatures that will survive the computation, to turn the computation's output into life. In addition, make sure that at least a few tokens created by our Xathrid Necromancers survive the computation.
To build back up, use the upcoming Polymorphs to have our tokens turn into copies of our opponent's Cogwork Assembler and Thousand-Year Storm, then use Assembler to get TYS tokens based on the life we've gained. Then resolve the next Emergency Powers to draw our cards back, replay Wedding Invitation (since we can't keep it on the opponent's field), and then replay our instants to set up for a new computation. At this point, we should be able to run one computation per Emergency Powers resolution.
Not sure how to calculate the final damage, but I think it works.
Edit: Think we can make it 17, by using Echo of Eons. After the first use, we can play our permanents, then use flashback to run the computation. Not needing to worry about card draw means we can switch to Alchemist's Gift.
I think an issue there is that true polymorph can give opponents copies of black lotus and cogwork assembler, which allows them to interrupt unbounded computations at instant speed.
I think an issue there is that true polymorph can give opponents copies of black lotus and cogwork assembler, which allows them to interrupt unbounded computations at instant speed.
Storm King's Thunder at X=1, Echo of Eons copied once. The first time, play Offering (14 mana) and Thunder at X=7. The second time, play Offering 8 times (328 mana).
Over the course of the flashbacks, we can chain Storm King's Thunder into later castings of itself, and direct the copies in batches towards different spells. I'm not sure how to optimally do this, but after some setup, we should be able to run the computation once per Echo. After a computation, Solitude can exile a large token left on our side of the board to carry over to the next one.
No, that's the right card. It's quite convenient for giving tokens to both players and getting increasing amounts of life/mana.
That said, I think the Storm King's Thunder version might only be able to run computations for half the Echo of Eons castings, since it can't play Artificial Evolution midway through a set of True Polymorph copies and still have it get copied. (This is important since we need Polymorph both to build the current computation and then to start rebuilding our board afterward.)
That said, I think the Storm King's Thunder version might only be able to run computations for half the Echo of Eons castings, since it can't play Artificial Evolution midway through a set of True Polymorph copies and still have it get copied. (This is important since we need Polymorph both to build the current computation and then to start rebuilding our board afterward.)
I believe FourtyTwo has proven that you only need to resolve one copy of AE in between computations to set up for the next one; essentially by using it on a specific token such that it kills a precise number of tokens, transforming the output of the previous computation into arbitrary suitable input to the next. I don;t remember the precise details though.
However, using Ember-Fist Zubera as the computation-initialising damage source means that the amount of damage each arcbond does changes each time, which probably does require more copies of AE to modify the setup.
That said, I think the Storm King's Thunder version might only be able to run computations for half the Echo of Eons castings, since it can't play Artificial Evolution midway through a set of True Polymorph copies and still have it get copied. (This is important since we need Polymorph both to build the current computation and then to start rebuilding our board afterward.)
I believe FourtyTwo has proven that you only need to resolve one copy of AE in between computations to set up for the next one; essentially by using it on a specific token such that it kills a precise number of tokens, transforming the output of the previous computation into arbitrary suitable input to the next. I don;t remember the precise details though.
However, using Ember-Fist Zubera as the computation-initialising damage source means that the amount of damage each arcbond does changes each time, which probably does require more copies of AE to modify the setup.
Oh, huh. We can copy Artificial Evolution in this sequence if we do it before recasting True Polymorph, as long as we can get enough mileage out of the Polymorph copies from the trigger we left on the stack during the computation. That wouldn't be enough to rewrite the board on a level proportional to the previous computation's output, but it would give the chance to make other adjustments, such as setting the initializing Zubera to a new or little-used creature type.
Looks like we don't need to rely on that anyway, and we can do one computation per echo:
The minimum we need on our side of the board to start a computation is a Zubera and a Xathrid Necromaner (so that we end up with a token at the end of everything).
Then we play SKT for a large X, hold priority and play spite. Stack necromancer trigger under Zubera trigger. This runs the computation, then generates a token with BB(X) power.
We then play solitude for BB(X) life, then SKT for BB(X), copied X times. Resolve copy 1; play benevolent offering to give both players BB(X) new spirits. Resolve copy 2; play true polymorph (copied BB(X) times) to set up everything we need, including the creatures we need on our side. Resolve copy 3; play AE (copied BB(X) times) to set up all the creature types we need. Between AE and Polymorph that's enough to set up everything we need for the next computation including accounting for the extra arcbond damage the next zubera death will create. Then play arcbond on a silitude they control, followed by spite.
Spite initiates next computation and leaves behind a BB(BB(X)) token, then a bunch more SKTs for BB(X) resolve, followed by the next echo; and we repeat.
The 7 cards drawn from echo were therefore solitude, SKT, offering, polymorph, AE, arcbond, spite.
Looks like we don't need to rely on that anyway, and we can do one computation per echo:
The minimum we need on our side of the board to start a computation is a Zubera and a Xathrid Necromaner (so that we end up with a token at the end of everything).
Then we play SKT for a large X, hold priority and play spite. Stack necromancer trigger under Zubera trigger. This runs the computation, then generates a token with BB(X) power.
We then play solitude for BB(X) life, then SKT for BB(X), copied X times. Resolve copy 1; play benevolent offering to give both players BB(X) new spirits. Resolve copy 2; play true polymorph (copied BB(X) times) to set up everything we need, including the creatures we need on our side. Resolve copy 3; play AE (copied BB(X) times) to set up all the creature types we need. Between AE and Polymorph that's enough to set up everything we need for the next computation including accounting for the extra arcbond damage the next zubera death will create. Then play arcbond on a silitude they control, followed by spite.
Spite initiates next computation and leaves behind a BB(BB(X)) token, then a bunch more SKTs for BB(X) resolve, followed by the next echo; and we repeat.
The 7 cards drawn from echo were therefore solitude, SKT, offering, polymorph, AE, arcbond, spite.
Oh, I'd thought we'd need to get Mycosynth Lattice back on our side of the field, but it works for all players. That simplifies things.
Edit: Thinking back to the concerns about Cogwork Assembler decks going infinite if we gave the opponent a Black Lotus token - would that same concern apply to pretty much any Busy Beaver deck with access to haste? If we were to attack with something, and the opponent blocked, that could start a computation without clearing our side of the board.
Decks with access to haste still work provided combat is the only way to deal a large amount of damage to the opponent. So if an unbounded computation is started during combat, we can't actually use it to deal unbounded damage to the opponent. (this also means we can't use first strike or double strike; as that would create an additional combat damage step).
Unfortunately, I've noticed another problem with this deck. True Polymorph allows for something with damage marked on it to become Ember fist Zubera and die, starting a computation without clearing our hand and board.
It can be fixed by using Goblin Boom Keg (since it can't become a creature); but then we need an extra card for the final damage output.
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Phasing is weird!
Looks like some creature-specific sweepers that give potentially relevant resources are Shatter the Sky, Oversimplify, Whiptongue Hydra, and Fumigate. Getting use out of them would require getting some creatures back out after playing Out of Time, though.
If the phased-out creatures don't come back, then I don't see how this can work to make a Saw in Half hyperstage. Time and Tide will bring all the phased out creatures back, but that's not selective enough.
So if Time A phases out group A, then Time B phases out Time A and group B, and Time C phases out Time B and group C, then we can remove Time C to bring Time B and group C back, and then we can remove Time B to bring Time A and group B back, etc.
Zur, Eternal Schemer is convenient since he makes the stage movement cost white mana, although I'm not sure if there's a way to tie moving back to earlier stages to getting that mana back. If there is a way to make it work, one nice thing about using Copy Enchantment is that it allows Astral Dragon to make noncreature copies of Doubling Season, so they can survive through creature sweepers.
Edit: Rather than going back to earlier stages by spending more white mana to animate it again, maybe we could use an enchantment sweeper that recovers the resource somehow?
I guess this sort of depth tracking is also the mechanism behind non-Toralf/Saw stages? I wonder what it would take to get access to easier hyperstages the way those two cards can do stages.
Edit: Maybe we could replace Copy Enchantment with Replication Technique, so we need to spend blue mana to make non-creature Out of Time tokens? Although that would mean we would need a way to get back Astral Dragon after a sweeper that doesn't involve either casting it normally or using Omniscience.
Hmm, so does having to spend blue mana to make non-creature Out of Time tokens prevent us from phasing out creatures from a higher stage and getting them back in the lower stage? I'm a bit lost with the limiting factors.
My thinking is that we could do something like, use life as the hyperstage resource and link that to white and blue mana access with something like Adarkar Wastes. In that case, tucking away a previous stage would require using 1 life to have Zur animate the previous Out of Time, then another 1 life to use Replication Technique to make a noncreature copy that could safely phase out the previous ones. Trying to phase out creatures from a higher phase to bring them back in a lower phase would require spending additional life to use Replication Technique an extra time.
Edit: To get back that 2 life when moving backwards, maybe Forsaken Monument + All Is Dust? That would mean being unable to haste-gate any colorless tokens created by Astral Dragon, since they'd start at 5/5, but I think we can handle that.
2 Show and Tell
3 Omniscience
4 Doubling Season
5 Thousand-Year Storm
6 Astral Dragon
7 Kiss of the Amesha
8 Bloodthorn Taunter
9 Scribe of the Mindful
10 Saw in Half
11 Bhaal, Lord of Murder
12 Underground River
13 Blood Celebrant
14 Zur, Eternal Schemer
15 Out of Time
16 Living Death
17 Forsaken Monument
18 All Is Dust
19 Archon of Falling Stars
Kiss of the Amesha gets copied five times to draw our remaining 12 carda and gain 42 life, although there might be options to get more life out of something like Resupply. Scribe of the Mindful is our stage creature, with Bhaal, Lord of Murder giving it +1/+1 counters every time a nontoken creature dies.
To advance, we hide our creatures under Out of Time, then cast Living Death to bring back our original creature cards. To repeat this later, we have Zur, Eternal Schemer animate our previous Out of Time, which costs 2 life between Blood Celebrant and Underground River, then cast Saw in Half on it. (Assuming Saw follows copiable values rather than forcing the tokens to be creatures.)
To move back, use All Is Dust, triggering Forsaken Monument to gain 2 life (and no more, because it's legendary). Thousand-Year Storm lets us keep increasing the value of our Saw castings between stages, while Archon of Falling Stars brings back Omniscience and Thousand-Year Storm when we're forced to sacrifice them.
If this works, I'm sure there's room to compress it further.
I wanted to use a shockland like Godless Shrine for a cleaner white mana source, but the fact that Out of Time untaps the phased-out creatures meant that wasn't viable.
Edit: Wait, Bhaal doesn't vary the number of +1/+1 counter granting instances.
Swap out Bhaal for Archangel of Thune? The +1/+1 counter distributing goes on the stack in response to the lifegain, then the stage plays out between that and resolution. Number of Archangels depends on storm count.
Edit: Bigger problem - I don't think we're using up anything from the earlier stage that the later stage can't replace. I'm not sure the phasing strategy can actually get around this. Out of Time is even untapping the earlier stage's Scribes.
Edit: Kaervek's Spite would probably help. But we'd also need a way to avoid tapping being relevant. If we move away from Forsaken Monument and Black Lotus, we could take care of the recursion with Paleoloth and Colossal Skyturtle. But we'd need a new way to get life back.
Edit: Paleoloth tokens can loop the original, although the fact that each Scribe of the Mindful has to sacrifice itself means untapping doesn't allow us to reuse them anyway.
New take:
2 Mana Crypt
3 Show and Tell
4 Omniscience
5 Acolyte of Affliction
6 Doubling Season
7 Thousand-Year Storm
8 Astral Dragon
9 Saw in Half
10 Scribe of the Mindful
11 Bloodthorn Taunter
12 Blood Celebrant
13 Zur, Eternal Schemer
14 Out of Time
15 Forsaken Monument
16 All Is Dust
17 Archangel of Thune
18 Vedalken Orrery
19 Brokers Confluence
Edit: Wait, using the Forsaken Monument trigger means All Is Dust is stuck on the stack. This is bringing in all the same problems as the Toralf version.
I feel like just using Toralf is probably more efficient.
Edit: Does casting Kaervek's Spite with Thousand-Year Storm out cause it to get copied?
601.2h The player pays the total cost. First, they pay all costs that don’t involve random elements or
moving objects from the library to a public zone, in any order. Then they pay all remaining
costs in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.
Example: You cast Altar’s Reap, which costs {1}{B} and has an additional cost of
sacrificing a creature. You sacrifice Thunderscape Familiar, whose effect makes your
black spells cost {1} less to cast. Because a spell’s total cost is “locked in” before
payments are actually made, you pay {B}, not {1}{B}, even though you’re sacrificing the
Familiar.
601.2i Once the steps described in 601.2a–h are completed, effects that modify the characteristics of
the spell as it’s cast are applied, then the spell becomes cast. Any abilities that trigger when a
spell is cast or put onto the stack trigger at this time. If the spell’s controller had priority before
casting it, they get priority.
This makes it easier to use Kaervek's Spite to recover life. We can run Darksteel Colossus and have the only way for it to get back into our library is discarding it, so that a use of Kaervek's Spite allows one more casting of Resupply to get back the 1 life from Zur and the 5 life from hitting ourselves with Spite.
If it's fine for successive stages to just increase the +1/+1 counter count rather than the number of +1/+1 counter instances, I think we could do this:
2 Show and Tell
3 Omniscience
4 Doubling Season
5 Thousand-Year Storm
6 Astral Dragon
7 Resupply
8 Saw in Half
9 Scribe of the Mindful
10 Bloodthorn Taunter
11 Zur, Eternal Schemer
12 Adarkar Wastes
13 Out of Time
14 Kaervek's Spite
15 Darksteel Colossus
16 Oversimplify
17 Fate Transfer
18 Pharika's Mender
(To use Oversimplify effectively, we'll need to kill our creatures and get them back to our hand before an Out of Time use, then once again play/kill/return them to make sure we just have tokens out when playing Oversimplify, then replay them to make use of the new counter batches.)
Edit: Not requiring life to cast the board wipe seems like a problem, it could be too easy to just loop it infinitely and build up storm count (and higher +1/+1 counter counts). Hythonia the Cruel could help but that would change the life costs needed.
Also Resupply would inevitably get copied by TYS, so that's a problem too.
Edit: Happily Ever After + K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth seemed like a great fix until I noticed K'rikk gives more chances to use Fate Transfer.
(Wait, Happily Ever After would kill the opponent anyway.)
Edit:
2 Show and Tell
3 Omniscience
4 Doubling Season
5 Thousand-Year Storm
6 Astral Dragon
7 Elite Guardmage
8 Saw in Half
9 Scribe of the Mindful
10 Bloodthorn Taunter
11 Zur, Eternal Schemer
12 Caves of Koilos
13 Out of Time
14 Kaervek's Spite
15 Darksteel Colossus
16 Hythonia the Cruel
17 Fate Transfer
18 Pharika's Mender
19 Frilled Mystic
Our phased-out permanents come back in time to respond to Kaervek's Spite, so we can counter it with Mystic Snake tokens. Although that could mean the phased-out TYS copies do trigger, so we'd probably need to cast Saw on Mystic Snake once for every TYS. But using Saw in Half on one 9-power Scribe of the Mindful will give more than enough recursion for that.
Edit: I don't think this start works. More importantly, with some of the life payment is moved to Hythonia, there's nothing stopping us from just running the Kaervek's Spite part back and forth to accumulate life that way. But without a life payment involved with the board wipe, we can loop that part. I get the idea this implies needing two hyperstage resources, one for each direction, which sounds like a huge mess.
Hopefully I'll have more time to focus on this soon. (As well as finish the way-late Standard deck writeup)
2 Channel
3 Mycosynth Lattice
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Cogwork Assembler
6 Benevolent Offering
7 Wedding Invitation
8 Dryad's Revival
9 Emergency Powers
10 True Polymorph
11 Ember-Fist Zubera
12 Kaervek's Spite
14 Xathrid Necromancer
15 Artificial Evolution
16 Arcbond
17 Comeuppance
18 Dralnu's Crusade
Play Black Lotus, Channel, Mycosynth Lattice. 14 mana.
Play Cogwork Assembler, Thousand-Year Storm, and Benevolent Offering. Gain 8 life, then 14. 23 mana.
Play Wedding Invitation, then use Cogwork Assembler to make two TYS tokens. Sacrifice Invitation, then play Dryad's Revival, which triggers all three TYS. 4 mana.
For each TYS trigger, point one of the Revivals at Benevolent Offering and replay it. When resolving a chain of Offerings, as long as there's at least 4 instances left in the current round, dump any life gained into Cogwork Assembler to get more life back by the time the chain resolves, then use the life from the final rounds to make more TYS copies for the next round. Use extra Revivals to pick up our artifacts.
Once the stack empties, replay Wedding Invitation to draw True Polymorph, and use it to turn as many extra creatures as possible into TYS copies. Sacrifice Invitation and Black Lotus again, then flashback Dryad's Revival, letting all the TYS copies trigger. This time, have all the rounds of Revivals incorporate True Polymorph alongside Benevolent Offering.
After that finishes, replay Lotus and Invitation, drawing Emergency Powers, and play it, having every TYS copy it. For the first few copies, in addition to building up our board, use its ability to play permanents to play Ember-Fist Zubera, Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, and Dralnu's Crusade. Then use True Polymorph and Artificial Evolution to turn the opponent's spirits into the things we need, and load necessary effects with Arcbond, Comeuppance, and Wedding Invitation.
With True Polymorph and at least one TYS trigger from it on the stack, use Kaervek's Spite to run a computation. When it finishes, rather than pointing extra Ember-Fist Zubera triggers at the opponent, make sure that they had lifelink and are pointed at ceatures that will survive the computation, to turn the computation's output into life. In addition, make sure that at least a few tokens created by our Xathrid Necromancers survive the computation.
To build back up, use the upcoming Polymorphs to have our tokens turn into copies of our opponent's Cogwork Assembler and Thousand-Year Storm, then use Assembler to get TYS tokens based on the life we've gained. Then resolve the next Emergency Powers to draw our cards back, replay Wedding Invitation (since we can't keep it on the opponent's field), and then replay our instants to set up for a new computation. At this point, we should be able to run one computation per Emergency Powers resolution.
Not sure how to calculate the final damage, but I think it works.
Edit: Think we can make it 17, by using Echo of Eons. After the first use, we can play our permanents, then use flashback to run the computation. Not needing to worry about card draw means we can switch to Alchemist's Gift.
2 Channel
3 Mycosynth Lattice
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Cogwork Assembler
6 Benevolent Offering
7 Echo of Eons
8 Alchemist's Gift
9 True Polymorph
11 Kaervek's Spite
12 Coat of Arms
13 Xathrid Necromancer
14 Artificial Evolution
15 Arcbond
16 Comeuppance
17 Dralnu's Crusade
2 Channel
3 Mycosynth Lattice
4 Storm King's Thunder
5 Benevolent Offering
6 Echo of Eons
7 Solitude
8 True Polymorph
10 Kaervek's Spite
11 Coat of Arms
12 Xathrid Necromancer
13 Artificial Evolution
14 Arcbond
15 Comeuppance
16 Dralnu's Crusade
Black Lotus, Channel, Mycosynth Lattice, Ember-Fist Zubera, Benevolent Offering, go to 16 mana.
Storm King's Thunder at X=1, Echo of Eons copied once. The first time, play Offering (14 mana) and Thunder at X=7. The second time, play Offering 8 times (328 mana).
With the stack empty, play Coat of Arms, Xathrid Necromancer, and Dralnu's Crusade (317 mana). Play True Polymorph to turn one of the opponent's spirits into a second Coat of Arms, then play Solitude to exile one of our spirits and gain 119 life (425 mana). Play Storm King's Thunder at X=415, then flashback Echo of Eons.
Over the course of the flashbacks, we can chain Storm King's Thunder into later castings of itself, and direct the copies in batches towards different spells. I'm not sure how to optimally do this, but after some setup, we should be able to run the computation once per Echo. After a computation, Solitude can exile a large token left on our side of the board to carry over to the next one.
That said, I think the Storm King's Thunder version might only be able to run computations for half the Echo of Eons castings, since it can't play Artificial Evolution midway through a set of True Polymorph copies and still have it get copied. (This is important since we need Polymorph both to build the current computation and then to start rebuilding our board afterward.)
I believe FourtyTwo has proven that you only need to resolve one copy of AE in between computations to set up for the next one; essentially by using it on a specific token such that it kills a precise number of tokens, transforming the output of the previous computation into arbitrary suitable input to the next. I don;t remember the precise details though.
However, using Ember-Fist Zubera as the computation-initialising damage source means that the amount of damage each arcbond does changes each time, which probably does require more copies of AE to modify the setup.
The minimum we need on our side of the board to start a computation is a Zubera and a Xathrid Necromaner (so that we end up with a token at the end of everything).
Then we play SKT for a large X, hold priority and play spite. Stack necromancer trigger under Zubera trigger. This runs the computation, then generates a token with BB(X) power.
We then play solitude for BB(X) life, then SKT for BB(X), copied X times. Resolve copy 1; play benevolent offering to give both players BB(X) new spirits. Resolve copy 2; play true polymorph (copied BB(X) times) to set up everything we need, including the creatures we need on our side. Resolve copy 3; play AE (copied BB(X) times) to set up all the creature types we need. Between AE and Polymorph that's enough to set up everything we need for the next computation including accounting for the extra arcbond damage the next zubera death will create. Then play arcbond on a silitude they control, followed by spite.
Spite initiates next computation and leaves behind a BB(BB(X)) token, then a bunch more SKTs for BB(X) resolve, followed by the next echo; and we repeat.
The 7 cards drawn from echo were therefore solitude, SKT, offering, polymorph, AE, arcbond, spite.
Edit: Thinking back to the concerns about Cogwork Assembler decks going infinite if we gave the opponent a Black Lotus token - would that same concern apply to pretty much any Busy Beaver deck with access to haste? If we were to attack with something, and the opponent blocked, that could start a computation without clearing our side of the board.
Unfortunately, I've noticed another problem with this deck. True Polymorph allows for something with damage marked on it to become Ember fist Zubera and die, starting a computation without clearing our hand and board.
It can be fixed by using Goblin Boom Keg (since it can't become a creature); but then we need an extra card for the final damage output.