Chandra, Flame's Catalyst doesn't just get to ult that easily, she needs vorinclex. edit: oh you mean the -2, which doesnt work either as jfb pointed out.
But that makes sorcery speed card draw too cheap as quandrix command can bounce her.
I think we can go with a Mirrormade that first copies the spellbook for a second ultimatum, then becomes the second copy of reflections of littjara.
we need to counter the sea dasher octopus to cast it in the next stage layer above the reflections triggers, waiting for it to resolve is too slow. (countering it is easy though thanks to tibalt's trickery)
Finite:
Toralf always decreases the amount of damage it deals by at least one as long as it targets a creature that is not indestructible. (jfb is right on this rule)
stage rebuilding:
a trigger that deals X damage to an opponent's goat creates X triggers that do X-1 damage.
or another way of looking at it
actions:
Spend a life to draw a card -> U stage ->(make more toralfs, and give them more goats)
Use a toralf x>0 trigger to gain x life (most will be x=1, but that just means that the x=2 layer gains lots of life each time)
use a toralf x>1 trigger to make lots of toralf x-1 triggers
Spend a red to make a toralf=X trigger.
Is very nearly the Ackerman function, and terminates.
Unfortunately this standard has pretty awful options for mana rocks, so its cycling or like orb of dragonkind, and cycling does actually ruin the stage.
...
draw island with an Into the Roil copy.
draw cycler with into the roil.
draw octo with into the roil.
play island
mutate octo
sac/reshuffle island
cycle into island
play island
sac/reshuffle island
trickery into Into the Roil
...
tap the land, X floating
mutate, X-1
kill the land with redcap melee
reshuffle with Qcommand
counter the octo
activate investigator X-2
roll 11, say
get draw triggers
draw island
herbalist it in
tap the land X-1 floating
Yeah, originally the rule was just "the opponent's deck is 60 basic islands." but once wastes were printed that was the obvious choice for the vintage deck. Now in standard not only is waste not legal but all of the snow basics are. I'm fine with rewording the rule in that way. It is a bit of a cheat the way it is now.
Multiple choice is a sorcery, so we cant cast it with x>0 at instant speed.
Spitfire Lagac doesn't work either as the opponent has lands and we can give them hasty herbalists to put the hand into play, sac them to earth cult elemental, and draw them with Skemfar Avenger. I think that just leaves Drannith Stinger?
Edit: Oh and also casting trickery from hand is perfectly safe, as in order to get it back in hand we'd need to draw it, which needs an expensive resource.
Wow great work guys, Dual strike is a nice patch to prevent ultimatum infinites.
I'm pretty sure we don't have any other unintentional infinites.
Earth cult elemental works nicely. While it does change the stage loop a little, its not a problem.
Minor optimizations:
Cut Omen of the hunt for a red source (Ardent Electromancer?) and use Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded's sneak attack ability to make flash enchantments. There are more than enough legal red enchantment creatures, most of which are safe. (though I guess this doesn't actually help the creature count as we can't exile the last hero of the nyxborn without turning off thaumabroom... , still more flash enchantments makes thaumabrooming better)
Kazuul's Fury should be akoum warrior as an extra creature to exile and get more combats, then we can kill them with combat damage in the final combat. (Rockslide Sorcerer can be used for a source of noncombat damage that our opponent can't use)
I'm fairly certain that there's not any way to get another stage in here. Thaumabroom is already very nearly infinite, so there's no room 'above' the U stage on the stack. And 'below' the U stage we can cast any non x spell for free, and we have pretty limited options there. And I haven't even found another possible stage combo which all adds up to my conclusion: we only get this one stage, so we want to optimize our layers.
However, even our current layer setup has holes, for example, Black mana is currently unused. But the options for it are pretty limited. And I don't see anything better than the ones we have...
Yeah, ideally the extra cards would be green enchantment creatures with flash, but Boon satyr is long rotated, so we don't have any of those.
Edit: Hmm we don't need dance of the manse after animating what we need, so we can exile it with the spellbook, to get an extra casting of ultimatum.
Also I've gotten started on the writeup, I'm sending edit links in DMs as usual
Edit:
Oops! the line I had for the stage doesn't work, I think its not fatal but I had us casting a kicked Stormcaller for free when sea gate stormcaller's kicker actually costs blue. That was mostly to keep the stack self contained and adding an uncounterable spell at the bottom of the stack definitely fixes it, but I'm not sure it's necessary.
Wow, excellent work! I hadn't considered the spellbook for setup but it seems pretty good.
One note is that we don't get teach by example copies of genesis ultimatum in that line as they both go on the stack as part of spellbook's 20, se we'd need one more activation to get through the deck.
Yeah Vorniclex goes infinite, I forgot that Into the roil could bounce chandra.
Genesis ultimatum allows for us to save green mana for later, as we won't need to cast kasmina. Though the Forsaken monument/crawling barrens engine is slower and moots life instead...
I think treacherous blessing + frogify actually goes infinite, as we can get multiple enchantments on the stack at the same time with trickery and then use the first to draw cards and the second to turn the new thaumaturges back into something harmless.
Edit:
I might be missing something, but why can't we go off turn three with: t2:vorinclex->t3:chandra+ult?
This would also save us from burning green mana as we don't need the untapped land to cast kasmina.
Actually, if we want to be crazy, can we do turn 2(!?) with trickery into genesis ultimatum getting chandra, vorinclex, and other goodies?
But that makes sorcery speed card draw too cheap as quandrix command can bounce her.
I think we can go with a Mirrormade that first copies the spellbook for a second ultimatum, then becomes the second copy of reflections of littjara.
we need to counter the sea dasher octopus to cast it in the next stage layer above the reflections triggers, waiting for it to resolve is too slow. (countering it is easy though thanks to tibalt's trickery)
Finite:
Toralf always decreases the amount of damage it deals by at least one as long as it targets a creature that is not indestructible. (jfb is right on this rule)
stage rebuilding:
a trigger that deals X damage to an opponent's goat creates X triggers that do X-1 damage.
or another way of looking at it
actions:
Spend a life to draw a card -> U stage ->(make more toralfs, and give them more goats)
Use a toralf x>0 trigger to gain x life (most will be x=1, but that just means that the x=2 layer gains lots of life each time)
use a toralf x>1 trigger to make lots of toralf x-1 triggers
Spend a red to make a toralf=X trigger.
Is very nearly the Ackerman function, and terminates.
...
draw island with an Into the Roil copy.
draw cycler with into the roil.
draw octo with into the roil.
play island
mutate octo
sac/reshuffle island
cycle into island
play island
sac/reshuffle island
trickery into Into the Roil
...
tap the land, X floating
mutate, X-1
kill the land with redcap melee
reshuffle with Qcommand
counter the octo
activate investigator X-2
roll 11, say
get draw triggers
draw island
herbalist it in
tap the land X-1 floating
Multiple choice is a sorcery, so we cant cast it with x>0 at instant speed.
Edit: Oh and also casting trickery from hand is perfectly safe, as in order to get it back in hand we'd need to draw it, which needs an expensive resource.
I'm pretty sure we don't have any other unintentional infinites.
Earth cult elemental works nicely. While it does change the stage loop a little, its not a problem.
Minor optimizations:
Cut Omen of the hunt for a red source (Ardent Electromancer?) and use Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded's sneak attack ability to make flash enchantments. There are more than enough legal red enchantment creatures, most of which are safe. (though I guess this doesn't actually help the creature count as we can't exile the last hero of the nyxborn without turning off thaumabroom... , still more flash enchantments makes thaumabrooming better)
Kazuul's Fury should be akoum warrior as an extra creature to exile and get more combats, then we can kill them with combat damage in the final combat. (Rockslide Sorcerer can be used for a source of noncombat damage that our opponent can't use)
I'm fairly certain that there's not any way to get another stage in here. Thaumabroom is already very nearly infinite, so there's no room 'above' the U stage on the stack. And 'below' the U stage we can cast any non x spell for free, and we have pretty limited options there. And I haven't even found another possible stage combo which all adds up to my conclusion: we only get this one stage, so we want to optimize our layers.
However, even our current layer setup has holes, for example, Black mana is currently unused. But the options for it are pretty limited. And I don't see anything better than the ones we have...
Edit: Hmm we don't need dance of the manse after animating what we need, so we can exile it with the spellbook, to get an extra casting of ultimatum.
Also I've gotten started on the writeup, I'm sending edit links in DMs as usual
Edit:
Oops! the line I had for the stage doesn't work, I think its not fatal but I had us casting a kicked Stormcaller for free when sea gate stormcaller's kicker actually costs blue. That was mostly to keep the stack self contained and adding an uncounterable spell at the bottom of the stack definitely fixes it, but I'm not sure it's necessary.
One note is that we don't get teach by example copies of genesis ultimatum in that line as they both go on the stack as part of spellbook's 20, se we'd need one more activation to get through the deck.
Genesis ultimatum allows for us to save green mana for later, as we won't need to cast kasmina. Though the Forsaken monument/crawling barrens engine is slower and moots life instead...
I guess since we are using lands for the stage: haste + Kinnan, bonder prodigy + palladium myr?
Edit:
I might be missing something, but why can't we go off turn three with: t2:vorinclex->t3:chandra+ult?
This would also save us from burning green mana as we don't need the untapped land to cast kasmina.
Actually, if we want to be crazy, can we do turn 2(!?) with trickery into genesis ultimatum getting chandra, vorinclex, and other goodies?