Hmm, it seems like it doesn't quite work. We can cast Into the Roll kicked and Tibalt's Trickery for two blue and a red, then we can counter both original spells for two casts of Song-Mad Treachery for two blue, and if we have Birgi, God of Storytelling, we should profit red. Also the card draw from Into the Roll allows us to bring it back to our hand afterwards, so it looks like it goes infinite.
Yeah, my nine layer idea doesn't quite work; it still works for one TT, but obviously a stage would be much better.
Ooh, Into the Roil looks nice. I think it can work as a stage even with the targeting problem. Basically each time we put a bunch of triggers on the stack, we resolve the top one to turn it into a spell. I don't see how to use the intermediate triggers for TT effectively, so those won't be true layers; we use however many TT copies we need to counter the originals, then we just resolve down to the ItR layer, resolve the top one to draw TT, and cast TT again. So the ItR layers actually function as layers, which is all we need.
So, I think we just need X to provide one blue or red mana per cast?
Hmmm, The Great Henge is interesting; but unfortunately, the life gain means that it moots the payland option, which is currently better. So I don't see how to use it profitably at the moment.
Edit: Okay, I think I can get back up to 13 layers. If we can make the Thaumaturge combo self-sufficient, say by adding General Kudro of Drannith to alternately destroy Archon of Falling Stars and Nyxbloom Ancient, then we can limit the combo by mana alone. Tapping a Canopy Tactician gets us 3*3^X green mana if we have X Nyxbloom Ancients, which can pay for 3^X Thaumabroom triggers, so that is layer 1. We can then use Kenrith, the Returned King to give a lot of Canopy Tacticians haste for the use of a red. So our layer sequence goes like:
Layer 1: Each Canopy Tactician taps for 3*3^X mana with X Nyxbloom Ancients
Layer 2: Spending an R gives haste to many Canopy Tacticians
Layer 3: Casting a green or red creature with flash generates a bunch of red mana, thanks to Birgi, God of Storytelling
Layer 4: Casting Blood Beckoning can return the green or red creature many times
Layer 5: Tapping a Swamp generates a lot of black mana
Layer 6: Targeting a Swamp with Usher to Safety creates a lot of Swamps
Layer 9: Casting Absorb Identity can return a mutated creature to our hand many times
Layer 10: Tapping Volatile Fjord can generate a lot of blue mana
Layer 11: A Jorn, God of Winter trigger can untap a lot of copies of Volatile Fjord
Layer 12: We can attack with many copies of Jorn, God of Winter every combat phase
Layer 13: Moraug can create many combat phases, both after the precombat and postcombat main phases
Possible avenues of improvement: We haven't used artifacts (partially for the reasons stated previously), and we basically waste a color in the beginning with the Canopy Tactician being spent for the Thaumaturge combo. If we can free up that color, we could potentially use artifacts and the extra color for another two layers? So even if we have to give up a layer to get that, we would profit. We can perhaps avoid using up a color that early, by using Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders, abetted by Forsaken Monument. If we just use this to replace Canopy Tactian however, we will lose at least a layer, since the mana generated by Forsaken Monument isn't multiplied by Nyxbloom Ancient. If we can't turn Forsaken Monument into a creature to make copies (likely if we are going to use artifacts for layers), then we lose two layers with the straight up switch. So, I don't see how to make an improvement at the moment, even if we had artifacts that generated fewer colors of mana.
Edit: Oh, I think we can do a lot of trickery with Tibalt's Trickery!
Let's say we have four copies of Tibalt's Trickery. We can set up a nine layer stack of alternating spells, with Tibalt's Trickery in the even layers, and some other spell (can be pretty much anything, but instants and sorceries get copies more easily) in the odd layers. Also have some way to put cards from our graveyard into our library. After we resolve the top layer, we can resolve the top Tibalt's Trickery in the second layer, countering a lower Tibalt's Trickery (counter the nontoken one first so that it is available.) to recast the top spell. After the TT layer is exhausted, resolve the last TT and counter a spell from the next layer down, to cast TT again. The key is that we have to counter a non TT spell to recast TT, so we have to lose a spell from some layer further down. So I think this doesn't go infinite.
Nine layers could certainly help out! Even juicier would be to make this into a stage somehow. But, I don't know how to set up a stage resource properly; the obvious resource would be some color of mana, but we would need the evaluation of alternating spells to get us back a mana somehow. I'm not seeing how to do that yet.
Hmm, that's an interesting possibility. Auspicious Starrix looks good, with the nice effect and the cheap mutate cost. There are a bunch of ways to put cards back into the library - one way is with Once and Future + Dual Strike + Ashiok's Erasure.
Edit: Oh, we want to have everything be done at instant speed, so we want to use Mutate cards with flash. That leaves three possible choices - Dirge Bat, Pouncing Shoreshark and Sea-Dasher Octopus. None of these seem to have a useful Mutate ability.
Edit: Oh shoot, Smashing Success doesn't work, as we can use it on an artifact to create a Treasure token. Unfortunately, the only other spell I found that targeted a land was Cleasning Wildfire, and that is a sorcery. So we have a problem.
We can target our land with Usher to Safety, but that can target any permanent, including artifacts. So, to make this work we need to have lands at a higher layer than artifacts. But, we want paylands to be at a higher layer than normal lands, and we want snow lands at the very top to get that layer from Jorn. This would normally be okay, except that the only artifacts I could find that produced mana, produced either 3 or 5 colors! Which means we can't put artifacts all that low. Hopefully, we'll see more narrow artifacts, either later in StrixHaven or in D&D. Until then, it looks like we need to give up something. We like the paylands and snow lands for their number of layers, so we need to give up either artifacts or normal lands - since we need to make copies of lands anyway, giving up artifacts seems like the easiest right now. That will cost us 2 layers, down to 11 at the moment, with a free color of mana to use.
I had the idea of using Demonic Gifts and Heartless Act to bring Skull Prophet from the graveyard to the battlefield and back. Unfortunately, if we want to use Sea Gate Stormcaller as our spell copier, we need to put them into play, without being able to put Skull Prophet into play instead. Just getting one Sea Gate Stormcaller every time we get a Skull Prophet isn't enough I think. So I don't know how to make it work. Rhythm of the Wild would be ideal it looks like, but it's not legal anymore.
Edit: I believe I can bump this up to 13 layers. Instead of mutating with Vulpikeet, we use something cheap like Dirge Bat. Then, we use Absorb Identity, so that for a blue mana we can bounce our Dirge Bat and Mutate it again many times.
Layer 7: Tapping Savai Crystal generates a lot of white mana.
Layer 8: Casting Depart the Realm creates many copies of Savai Crystal.
Layer 9: Tapping Volatile Fjord generates a lot of blue mana.
Layer 10: A trigger of Jorn, God of Winter untaps many copies of Volatile Fjord.
Layer 11: In a combat phase, we can attack with many copies of Jorn, God of Winter.
Layer 12: We can get many combat phases both after the precombat main phase and after the postcombat main phase, thanks to Moraug, Fury of Akoum.
So we're looking at a score of something like 2 -> (2 -> X -> 12) -> 12, where X is how many landfall triggers we can generate before the first set of combat phases, assuming the above works out.
We still have 31 slots left to improve the deck. Drawing out our deck should not be difficult - we can have four copies of Ugin, for example.
Turn 3 is very fast! Unfortunately, being able to cast spells for free messes up the idea I had above. We can look for an alternative layer sequence of course, but of we are going to use mana layers, we will need to look for activated costs, X or "was spent" spells, or spells cast outside of our hand.
Hmm, Ardent Electromancer would be pretty good, except it uses up red mana, so my idea of using Claim the Firstborn to give Canopy Tactician haste doesn't pan out. Unless, we use some other color of mana besides the green for Bala Ged Recovery to bring Claim the Firstborn back to our hand? Or, we could keep Bala Ged Recovery, and use a creature that taps for mana that isn't green... but I didn't see any such creatures.
Leaving that aside, we can use Orvar, the All-Form to create many copies of our artifacts and lands, and then use The Bloody Massacre to get red mana. Then we could potentially get seven layers:
Layer 1: putting an enchantment into play allows us to perform the Thaumabroom combo, taking X Thaumabrooms to 2^X Thuamabrooms.
Layer 2: Tapping a land/artifact will generate a lot of mana thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients.
Layer 3: Targeting a land/artifact with an instant/sorcery will create a lot of token copies thanks to Orvar, the All-Forms.
Layer 4: Tapping an artifact/land will generate a lot of mana.
Layer 5: Targeting an artifact/land with an instant/sorcery will create a lot of token copies.
Layer 1: putting an enchantment into play allows us to perform the Thaumabroom combo, taking X Thaumabrooms to 2^X Thuamabrooms.
Layer 2: Tapping a land for a particular color of mana (say red) will get us a lot of red mana thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients. We can use this to cast many Aspect of Manticore many times. We can return Aspect of Manticore to our hand with Bala Ged Recovery.
Layer 3: Tapping an artifact can produce a lot of mana, say blue mana. This will allow us to cast Rewind many times, untapping our red mana land.
We can have 40+ artifacts to get 2^^^^40+ damage - but yeah, not a whole lot as of yet.
It would have been nice to use say Canopy Tactician for green mana, and then use Claim the Firstborn for red to give Canopy Tactician haste, giving us another layer. But, then we have the question of how we get mana for the Thaumaturges. Are there any ways to get cheap mana that will pay for all the Thaumaturge triggers, other than tapping a creature?
Hmmm... so with the Thaumabroom strategy, we go form X to 2^X each time we respond with a constellation trigger. Here's the problem: Having to respond with putting an enchantment into play, means we can't have more layers that are based on the stack. We can still have layers based on resources - except, Gilded Goose cuts out life and all colors or mana! So, we may have painted ourselves into a corner here.
One possibility is to switch out Gilded Goose for another sacrifice outlet, to get our resources back. But, it is quite possible that some other combo is the way to go, given that we only get to 2^X with this one. (We could still use this to get started, or to copy creatures - although for the latter we need to be able to put an enchantment into play cheaply, but not so cheap as to go infinite.)
Ooh, Into the Roil looks nice. I think it can work as a stage even with the targeting problem. Basically each time we put a bunch of triggers on the stack, we resolve the top one to turn it into a spell. I don't see how to use the intermediate triggers for TT effectively, so those won't be true layers; we use however many TT copies we need to counter the originals, then we just resolve down to the ItR layer, resolve the top one to draw TT, and cast TT again. So the ItR layers actually function as layers, which is all we need.
So, I think we just need X to provide one blue or red mana per cast?
Edit: Okay, I think I can get back up to 13 layers. If we can make the Thaumaturge combo self-sufficient, say by adding General Kudro of Drannith to alternately destroy Archon of Falling Stars and Nyxbloom Ancient, then we can limit the combo by mana alone. Tapping a Canopy Tactician gets us 3*3^X green mana if we have X Nyxbloom Ancients, which can pay for 3^X Thaumabroom triggers, so that is layer 1. We can then use Kenrith, the Returned King to give a lot of Canopy Tacticians haste for the use of a red. So our layer sequence goes like:
Layer 1: Each Canopy Tactician taps for 3*3^X mana with X Nyxbloom Ancients
Layer 2: Spending an R gives haste to many Canopy Tacticians
Layer 3: Casting a green or red creature with flash generates a bunch of red mana, thanks to Birgi, God of Storytelling
Layer 4: Casting Blood Beckoning can return the green or red creature many times
Layer 5: Tapping a Swamp generates a lot of black mana
Layer 6: Targeting a Swamp with Usher to Safety creates a lot of Swamps
Layer 7: Tapping Emeria, Shattered Skyclave can generate a lot of white mana
Layer 8: Mutating with Dirge Bat will gain us a lot of life, thanks to Essence Symbiote
Layer 9: Casting Absorb Identity can return a mutated creature to our hand many times
Layer 10: Tapping Volatile Fjord can generate a lot of blue mana
Layer 11: A Jorn, God of Winter trigger can untap a lot of copies of Volatile Fjord
Layer 12: We can attack with many copies of Jorn, God of Winter every combat phase
Layer 13: Moraug can create many combat phases, both after the precombat and postcombat main phases
Possible avenues of improvement: We haven't used artifacts (partially for the reasons stated previously), and we basically waste a color in the beginning with the Canopy Tactician being spent for the Thaumaturge combo. If we can free up that color, we could potentially use artifacts and the extra color for another two layers? So even if we have to give up a layer to get that, we would profit. We can perhaps avoid using up a color that early, by using Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders, abetted by Forsaken Monument. If we just use this to replace Canopy Tactian however, we will lose at least a layer, since the mana generated by Forsaken Monument isn't multiplied by Nyxbloom Ancient. If we can't turn Forsaken Monument into a creature to make copies (likely if we are going to use artifacts for layers), then we lose two layers with the straight up switch. So, I don't see how to make an improvement at the moment, even if we had artifacts that generated fewer colors of mana.
Edit: Oh, I think we can do a lot of trickery with Tibalt's Trickery!
Let's say we have four copies of Tibalt's Trickery. We can set up a nine layer stack of alternating spells, with Tibalt's Trickery in the even layers, and some other spell (can be pretty much anything, but instants and sorceries get copies more easily) in the odd layers. Also have some way to put cards from our graveyard into our library. After we resolve the top layer, we can resolve the top Tibalt's Trickery in the second layer, countering a lower Tibalt's Trickery (counter the nontoken one first so that it is available.) to recast the top spell. After the TT layer is exhausted, resolve the last TT and counter a spell from the next layer down, to cast TT again. The key is that we have to counter a non TT spell to recast TT, so we have to lose a spell from some layer further down. So I think this doesn't go infinite.
Nine layers could certainly help out! Even juicier would be to make this into a stage somehow. But, I don't know how to set up a stage resource properly; the obvious resource would be some color of mana, but we would need the evaluation of alternating spells to get us back a mana somehow. I'm not seeing how to do that yet.
Edit: Oh, we want to have everything be done at instant speed, so we want to use Mutate cards with flash. That leaves three possible choices - Dirge Bat, Pouncing Shoreshark and Sea-Dasher Octopus. None of these seem to have a useful Mutate ability.
Edit: Also, we'll want to replace Cauldron's Gift with Demonic Gifts.
Edit: Oh shoot, Smashing Success doesn't work, as we can use it on an artifact to create a Treasure token. Unfortunately, the only other spell I found that targeted a land was Cleasning Wildfire, and that is a sorcery. So we have a problem.
We can target our land with Usher to Safety, but that can target any permanent, including artifacts. So, to make this work we need to have lands at a higher layer than artifacts. But, we want paylands to be at a higher layer than normal lands, and we want snow lands at the very top to get that layer from Jorn. This would normally be okay, except that the only artifacts I could find that produced mana, produced either 3 or 5 colors! Which means we can't put artifacts all that low. Hopefully, we'll see more narrow artifacts, either later in StrixHaven or in D&D. Until then, it looks like we need to give up something. We like the paylands and snow lands for their number of layers, so we need to give up either artifacts or normal lands - since we need to make copies of lands anyway, giving up artifacts seems like the easiest right now. That will cost us 2 layers, down to 11 at the moment, with a free color of mana to use.
Edit: Hmm, I guess we don't need Demonic Gifts to bring Archon of Falling Stars back, since we can just destroy token copies. So the combo of Broken Wings and Archon of Falling Stars and Ashiok's Erasure appears to go infinite. We can replace Demonic Gifts and Broken Wings with Heartless Act, losing a layer.
I had the idea of using Demonic Gifts and Heartless Act to bring Skull Prophet from the graveyard to the battlefield and back. Unfortunately, if we want to use Sea Gate Stormcaller as our spell copier, we need to put them into play, without being able to put Skull Prophet into play instead. Just getting one Sea Gate Stormcaller every time we get a Skull Prophet isn't enough I think. So I don't know how to make it work. Rhythm of the Wild would be ideal it looks like, but it's not legal anymore.
Edit: I believe I can bump this up to 13 layers. Instead of mutating with Vulpikeet, we use something cheap like Dirge Bat. Then, we use Absorb Identity, so that for a blue mana we can bounce our Dirge Bat and Mutate it again many times.
2 Swamp
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Tibalt's Trickery
5 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
6 Tormod's Crypt
7 Tibalt's Trickery
8 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
9 Protean Thaumaturge
10 Sorcerer's Broom
11 Nyxbloom Ancient
12 Canopy Tactician
13 Thrashing Brontodon
15 Broken Wings
16 Archon of Falling Stars
17 Ashiok's Erasure
18 Sea Gate Stormcaller
19 Smashing Success
20 Dual Strke
21 Orvar, the All-Form
22 Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass
24 Vulpikeet
25 Savai Crystal
26 Depart the Realm
27 Jorn, God of Winter
28 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
29 Purphuros, Bronze-Blooded
with the layer sequence being:
Layer 1: Putting an enchantment into play allows us to perform the Thaumabroom combo, taking X Thaumabrooms to 2^X Thuamabrooms.
Layer 2: Casting Cauldron's Gift can return Archon of Falling Stars many times, thanks to copies of Sea Gate Stormcaller. Archon of Falling Stars can then be destroyed by Broken Wings, to bring Ashiok's Erasure back, to trigger our Protean Thaumaturges.
Layer 3: Tapping a Swamp generates a lot of black mana, thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients.
Layer 4: Targeting Swamp with Smashing Success will create a lot of token copies, thanks to Orvar, the All-Form.
Layer 5: Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass can tap for a lot of red mana, if we pay 3 life to have it come in untapped.
Layer 6: Mutating with Vulpikeet will gain us a lot of life, thanks to Essence Symbiote.
Layer 7: Tapping Savai Crystal generates a lot of white mana.
Layer 8: Casting Depart the Realm creates many copies of Savai Crystal.
Layer 9: Tapping Volatile Fjord generates a lot of blue mana.
Layer 10: A trigger of Jorn, God of Winter untaps many copies of Volatile Fjord.
Layer 11: In a combat phase, we can attack with many copies of Jorn, God of Winter.
Layer 12: We can get many combat phases both after the precombat main phase and after the postcombat main phase, thanks to Moraug, Fury of Akoum.
So we're looking at a score of something like 2 -> (2 -> X -> 12) -> 12, where X is how many landfall triggers we can generate before the first set of combat phases, assuming the above works out.
We still have 31 slots left to improve the deck. Drawing out our deck should not be difficult - we can have four copies of Ugin, for example.
Leaving that aside, we can use Orvar, the All-Form to create many copies of our artifacts and lands, and then use The Bloody Massacre to get red mana. Then we could potentially get seven layers:
Layer 1: putting an enchantment into play allows us to perform the Thaumabroom combo, taking X Thaumabrooms to 2^X Thuamabrooms.
Layer 2: Tapping a land/artifact will generate a lot of mana thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients.
Layer 3: Targeting a land/artifact with an instant/sorcery will create a lot of token copies thanks to Orvar, the All-Forms.
Layer 4: Tapping an artifact/land will generate a lot of mana.
Layer 5: Targeting an artifact/land with an instant/sorcery will create a lot of token copies.
Layer 6: A trigger of The Bloodsky Massacre can generate a lot of red mana.
Layer 7: We can trigger a lot of copies of The Bloodsky Massacre.
Layer 1: putting an enchantment into play allows us to perform the Thaumabroom combo, taking X Thaumabrooms to 2^X Thuamabrooms.
Layer 2: Tapping a land for a particular color of mana (say red) will get us a lot of red mana thanks to Nyxbloom Ancients. We can use this to cast many Aspect of Manticore many times. We can return Aspect of Manticore to our hand with Bala Ged Recovery.
Layer 3: Tapping an artifact can produce a lot of mana, say blue mana. This will allow us to cast Rewind many times, untapping our red mana land.
We can have 40+ artifacts to get 2^^^^40+ damage - but yeah, not a whole lot as of yet.
It would have been nice to use say Canopy Tactician for green mana, and then use Claim the Firstborn for red to give Canopy Tactician haste, giving us another layer. But, then we have the question of how we get mana for the Thaumaturges. Are there any ways to get cheap mana that will pay for all the Thaumaturge triggers, other than tapping a creature?
One possibility is to switch out Gilded Goose for another sacrifice outlet, to get our resources back. But, it is quite possible that some other combo is the way to go, given that we only get to 2^X with this one. (We could still use this to get started, or to copy creatures - although for the latter we need to be able to put an enchantment into play cheaply, but not so cheap as to go infinite.)