The best version should be "slightly improved start" in post #99
It gets 35 treasures with a Thieves' Tools on the stack. So that is where we go through the initial layers. Resolving the Thieves' Tools then gives us the treasures we use to set up the 1/1 copies of creatures we need.
We can't use the early Arlinn start found afterwards because it gives us the emblem before we have the opportunity to set up all our 1/1s, and those are not allowed to get +1/+1 counters. Though the technique from #100 to get access to the deck with 8 treasures still works and lets us start on the initial layers with 27 treasures left.
The start should get us to a point where we have thousands of Treasure and Blood tokens, without having any of those "+1/+1 on enter" effects active yet. At that point we can easily Bury in Books the original Orvar and replay it again to get an unbuffed version. We should set up weak copies of everything we want to target with Vanquish the Weak there and then just keep those copies around.
I think technically we could also operate the combo with only Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant and Aberrant Mind Sorcerer under 3 power. Copies of everything else could be generated frequently enough with the Archery part of Choose Your Weapon during the G-stage. But that would complicate the explanation for very little gain.
Unfortunately Storm the Festival would go infinite, since we could almost certainly still get started without exiling it, even if that is a bit slower. Then it can be used to move the Plains from the library to the battlefield while only costing green mana. We need that zone change to cost at least white. (For the W-Stage we get the Plains out of the library by targeting Path to the World Tree with Thraben Exorcism)
So unless we find an improvement to the start that prepares the Jin we can't have the flash emblem ready for the first Thieves' Tools cast. With the 35 treasures we get from the first Tools copy in that case we can still get access to most of our deck after spending 8 of them. But as far as I can tell none of the stages work without flash for Skyclave Shade and Spara's Adjudicators. The best I can find are 4 layers.
- Each of 27 treasure casts Tibalt's Trickery with X counterable spells on the stack. (And gets enough TT copies to counter them)
- Countering 1 of those spells casts Bloody Betrayal, and all copies untap an original creature to get X green mana
- Each green mana casts For the Family on the animated swamp, getting copies for X black mana.
- 3 black mana can cast Vanquish the Weak to double our Orvar, the All-Form count (our refresh the utility creatures as needed)
So I think we get 2^^^^29 treasures from the original Tools once we resolve that.
(There is only one layer from TT because we need flash for Sea Gate Stormcaller to cast it with kicker to get the double copy creation. Using TT to cast it would be too expensive)
Getting the Arlinn emblem is the only piece of setup we can't do at instant speed (using Tibalt's Trickery when necessary). So I think we can get access to all 4 stages and the layers up to red mana quickly and still have 10 or 11 treasures left with the Thieves' Tools on the stack.
Start by casting For the Family, targeting Sea Gate Stormcaller. Create one token. Cast another FtF targeting SGS. Create two tokens then resolve the SGS ability to put a FtF copy on the stack. Then cast Tibalt's Trickery, getting two copies. Those 3 TTs can target the 3 FtFs on the stack. We spent 4 mana so far.
Resolve the first TT to cast Bury in Books on Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. (Tokens are created and one sticks around.) Resolve the second TT to cast Jin. Spend two mana to copy the Jin spell with Double Major. (The spell is copied by Jin and we get 2 tokens.) Spend another mana on FtF targeting the non-legendary Jin to get 17 copies. (Resolve the 2nd Double Major and the original Jin afterwards, so they stay fresh.)
Resolve the 3rd TT to cast a Bloody Betrayal, getting 19 copies from the fresh Jins. This untaps Xorn 20 times to get us 20 WUG mana.
12 treasures are left. We can use the 20 WUG mana to put more counterable spells on the stack before casting the next TT. We need to cast Mage's Attendant to keep the original instants moving while copies are on the stack. It is probably worth it to animate the swamp here and make some progress from that.
I suspect it is possible to get access to everything after cracking only one more treasure for TT. But worst case we need two treasures and still have 10 left.
Edit:
Duh, no Jin-Gitaxias copies we get from targeting it with Bury in Books can stick around without sending the original to the graveyard and fizzling the BiB. So we don't get a copy of Double Major and end up with one less WUG mana.
With Vanquish the Weak we should be able to cut the Forest. It was needed to generate green mana at the top of W stage. But black mana is basically free there, and with Vanquish the Weak that extends to reusing instants and generating copies of instants. So we only need 1 green to cast Roiling Regrowth and we can generate 2 green with landfall triggers from our 2 basics:
Start with a Path to the World Tree layer on the stack, Snow-Covered Swamp and Plains in hand, Skyclave Shade in the graveyard:
1. put the swamp into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap it for G.
2. use G to cast Roiling Regrowth getting a bunch of copies. Resolve a copy to sacrifice Skyclave Shade.
3. put the plains into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for WG.
4. resolve more Roiling Regrowth copies to sacrifice Skyclave Shade and both basics.
5. use W to cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward. That gets both basics into the library.
(6.) resolve 2 trigger form the layer on the stack to get the basics back to hand.
So we generate G for every two Orvar triggers on Path to the World Tree. Enough to accumulate X green before putting a big G stage on the stack.
We now need the Snow-Covered Swamp throughout the combo, so we can't exile it to Culmination of Studies anymore. But playing an extra exilable instant/sorcery instead of the Forest is way better.
I don't think Vanquish the Weak can go infinite. It can target and destroy Skyclave Shade if we don't use flash for creatures, but that in itself doesn't do anything. Skyclave Shade only gets dangerous once it taps for green, and to do that we need to resolve the trigger it gets from First day of Class. The moment it gets haste it also gets +1/+1 and gets out of reach for Vanquish the Weak.
And I think that can be achieved with Croaking Counterpart. That + Double Major can produce a non-legendary 1/1 Frog-Gitaxias in the start and later get exiled. So we can get to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 18 -> 9.
I don't think it is possible to get a 1/1 Snow-Covered Swamp with Croaking Counterpart and Avalanche Caller. Since the Swamp copies wouldn't be creatures until we animate them individually. But if I missed something and it is possible to get a swamp that we can target with Vanquish the Weak, then that goes infinite.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
5th Exile: Lorehold Command. Fetch Sea Gate Stormcaller. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste, and we sacrifice a land to draw 2 (6 cards in hand). Resolve Tibalt's Trickery to mill 1 and cast Orvar, the All-Form. Keep it on the stack.
Tap 5 of the creatures for 5 green mana. Exile Spara's Adjudicators from hand and let Xorn tap for blue (GGGU, 5 cards in hand)
Cast Double Major targeting the Orvar spell, get a SGS copy, resolve all of them. (3 Orvars, GG, 4 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family twice, targeting Orvar (9 Orvars, 2 cards in hand)
6th Exile: Bloody Betrayal. Build stack to look like this:
-----------
8x Orvar token creation
9x Aberrant Mind Sorcerer token creation
Bloody Betrayal (targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer)
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Turntimber Symbiosis
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Turntimber Symbiosis
-----------
Resolve down until the spellbook untaps. Tap Orvar and the Mind Sorcerer for GG, get instants and sorceries back (9 Orvars, GG, 2 cards in hand + 9ish instants/sorceries)
Cast For the Family 2 times, targeting Orvar and then Xorn (17 Orvars, 18 Xorns)
Resolve Turntimber Symbiosis to fetch Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant.
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Thieves' Tools. Get a Jin copy and let the copy resolve. Get 19 treasures.
In response to the original Thieves' Tools we can use those 19 treasures to increase the Xorn count. Doing the simple thing and doubling Orvars 17 times we get to more than 2^21 Xorns. We are missing the Arlinn, the Pack's Hope emblem, so we can't really get the G stage going, but we can probably do better than doubling.
Resolve the Thieves' Tools to get more than 2^21 treasures. Certainly enough to get access to the entire combo quickly and then go through it.
Oh, casting Lithoform Engine for the first time has the same power as exiling an instant/sorcery. So we reach 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 18 -> 8.
Edit: Ah, I didn't notice that your previous list had 61 cards, so 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 17 -> 8 should be correct.
I used 2 copies of Double Major for the start, so another one should be among the "exilable spells". Though apart from the spells used during the start the composition of those doesn't really matter. I think there is still enough room to have one of them be Culmination of Studies for that little bit of extra value we get from exiling the Snow-Covered Swamp.
Edit: Weigh Down is an exilable spell that gives us some miniscule improvement by turning superfluous creature cards into green mana, which is worth slightly more than the black it costs
I meant we need 2 Rowan, Scholar of Sparks emblems. So even a single cast of Confront the Past would be enough, afterwards it can be exiled. Though it could also be used to get planeswalkers without paying expensive colors for the start, so we can have the emblems ready before casting Thieves' Tools.
What would be the problem with fetching Rowan? getting extra emblems from the -4 wouldn't hurt anything. And the -1 deals damage to the opponent. We can't deal excess damage to them without ending the game, so this can never trigger Toralf, God of Fury. And it is limited by the opponents life anyway.
Getting Will, Scholar of Frost to draw cards could be bad. But we don't have a cheap way to get that one back into the graveyard. And as it is the back-side of the card I don't think we can get him with Confront the Past anyway.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
5th Exile: Lorehold Command. Fetch Sea Gate Stormcaller. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste, and we sacrifice a land to draw 2 (6 cards in hand). Resolve Tibalt's Trickery to cast Orvar, the All-Form. Keep it on the stack.
Tap 5 of the creatures for 5 green mana. Exile Spara's Adjudicators from hand and let Sea Gate Stormcaller tap for blue (GGGU, 5 cards in hand)
Cast Double Major targeting the Orvar spell, get a SGS copy, resolve all of them. (3 Orvars, GG, 4 cards in hand)
Resolve down to the first trickery and tap Orvar for G (5 Orvars, GGG, 4 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family twice, targeting Orvar (17 Orvars, G, 2 cards in hand)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Bloody Betrayal, targeting Sea Gate Stormcaller. Get 17 token copies. Untap it and tap for U
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. In response cast Double Major and get 17 SGS copies. Let everything resolve to end up with 19 Jins. (1 card in hand)
Resolve down to the Tibalt's Trickeries, tapping creatures for 19 more mana and going up to 49 Orvars. Use all that mana on For the Family: Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, 17x Orvar, Jin. This gets us to 3*2^21+1=6291457 Orvars and as many fresh Jins.
Then we cast Bloody Betrayal of Tibalt's Trickery to get more mana and do it again: more than 2^6291479 Orvars and fresh Jins.
We have another Tibalt's Trickery to go to more than 2^2^6291479 Orvars, Jins and Xorns.
Resolve Turntimber Symbiosis to fetch Scaled Herbalist, resolve Lorehold Command to give it haste and put the Snow-Covered Swamp into play. Use the black mana to cast Thieves' Tools and get some some Jin copies, each of which creates a few treasure tokens.
I have not tried getting Jin-Gitaxias earlier, since we'd then need Bury in Books to cast it again before we can create non-legendary copies. But that could be something to explore for improvements.
1 layer more than our current activations of the Spellbook. But I don't know if we can hook it into combat somehow.
Since we can only activate Spellbook as a sorcery we need a new Spectral Steel ability each time we want to use it this way. So max 4 times. Then 4 more casts of Lithoform Engine (at instant speed via Tibalt's Trickery).
Edit: I guess we would also need Valakut Awakening to put the Thieves' Tools into the library in order to cast those at instant speed.
We will need some card to create that first Orvar token. It is quite annoying that Croaking Counterpart can't target Orvar. >_<
Options like Necroduality seem to be worse for the start than just running a second copy of Orvar. And with that I can't quite manage to get started with 5 exiles, but 6 exiles shouldn't be a problem. So we lose out on 1 exilable spell from running an additional creature and 1 from the slower start.
The other possibility would be running Double Major, which could take care of the initial token creation and replace Mirror Box, while being exilable. To tie the 6 exiles option above we could take up to 8 exiles for the start. But 7 exiles might be doable.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
4th Exile: Lorehold Command. Don't cast Tibalt's Trickery. Command targets Orvar to create a token. Get Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste.
Tap Orvar, Jin and Ashaya for G. (3 G, 3 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family 3 times: Orvar, Orvar, Jin. (8 Orvars, 8 fresh Jins)
Get the Orvar tokens, put Xorn, Vault Robber, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and 5 other creatures into play. Get For the Family back from GY. Give those creatures haste and tap them for G. Untap Orvar and tap it for G. Untap the Spellbook.
Cast For the Family targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. 24 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family 8 times (7x Orvar, then Jin) and get at least one copy back to hand in the end. (24*2^7=3*2^10=3072 Orvars)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery and cast Bloody Betrayal targeting Orvar (6144 Orvars). Get 3072 Jin copies of Bloody Betrayal. Use one of the untaps on the hasty Vault Robber. Use the rest to generate 3072 G.
Cast For the Family targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. 6144 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family another 3069 times targeting Orvar. We end up with 3*2^11*2^3069=3*2^3080 Orvars. (number has 928 digits)
Cast For the Family targeting Xorn, get token copies. Then exile the first creature (Goldhound) with Vault Robber to create 3*2^3080+2 treasures.
We still have 3074 Blood tokens and a few instants/sorceries in hand, so using some of that mana to get access to the entire deck and go through the full combo will not be a problem.
So 5 exiles with Vault Robber is possible on turn 2.
Without randomness we can use 1 more card and play Biblioplex Assistant. But if that is something we want to do we should also play 2 extra copies of Tibalt's trickery so no matter how much that spell mills we cast the same card. Mill randomness at the start seems unavoidable, but I find that more acceptable than randomness throughout the entire combo.
Starting on turn 2 we can't use Scaled Herbalist to get a 4th mana, so there is no extra red from the land drop. That means we can't go straight into Culmination of Studies after 5 exiles. I think it is likely that 5 exiles with Vault Robber can still get us started. That would be one less exilable spell, but we should work out the start again to make sure.
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It gets 35 treasures with a Thieves' Tools on the stack. So that is where we go through the initial layers. Resolving the Thieves' Tools then gives us the treasures we use to set up the 1/1 copies of creatures we need.
We can't use the early Arlinn start found afterwards because it gives us the emblem before we have the opportunity to set up all our 1/1s, and those are not allowed to get +1/+1 counters. Though the technique from #100 to get access to the deck with 8 treasures still works and lets us start on the initial layers with 27 treasures left.
I think technically we could also operate the combo with only Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant and Aberrant Mind Sorcerer under 3 power. Copies of everything else could be generated frequently enough with the Archery part of Choose Your Weapon during the G-stage. But that would complicate the explanation for very little gain.
So unless we find an improvement to the start that prepares the Jin we can't have the flash emblem ready for the first Thieves' Tools cast. With the 35 treasures we get from the first Tools copy in that case we can still get access to most of our deck after spending 8 of them. But as far as I can tell none of the stages work without flash for Skyclave Shade and Spara's Adjudicators. The best I can find are 4 layers.
- Each of 27 treasure casts Tibalt's Trickery with X counterable spells on the stack. (And gets enough TT copies to counter them)
- Countering 1 of those spells casts Bloody Betrayal, and all copies untap an original creature to get X green mana
- Each green mana casts For the Family on the animated swamp, getting copies for X black mana.
- 3 black mana can cast Vanquish the Weak to double our Orvar, the All-Form count (our refresh the utility creatures as needed)
So I think we get 2^^^^29 treasures from the original Tools once we resolve that.
(There is only one layer from TT because we need flash for Sea Gate Stormcaller to cast it with kicker to get the double copy creation. Using TT to cast it would be too expensive)
Getting the Arlinn emblem is the only piece of setup we can't do at instant speed (using Tibalt's Trickery when necessary). So I think we can get access to all 4 stages and the layers up to red mana quickly and still have 10 or 11 treasures left with the Thieves' Tools on the stack.
Start by casting For the Family, targeting Sea Gate Stormcaller. Create one token. Cast another FtF targeting SGS. Create two tokens then resolve the SGS ability to put a FtF copy on the stack. Then cast Tibalt's Trickery, getting two copies. Those 3 TTs can target the 3 FtFs on the stack. We spent 4 mana so far.
Resolve the first TT to cast Bury in Books on Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. (Tokens are created and one sticks around.) Resolve the second TT to cast Jin. Spend two mana to copy the Jin spell with Double Major. (The spell is copied by Jin and we get 2 tokens.) Spend another mana on FtF targeting the non-legendary Jin to get 17 copies. (Resolve the 2nd Double Major and the original Jin afterwards, so they stay fresh.)
Resolve the 3rd TT to cast a Bloody Betrayal, getting 19 copies from the fresh Jins. This untaps Xorn 20 times to get us 20 WUG mana.
12 treasures are left. We can use the 20 WUG mana to put more counterable spells on the stack before casting the next TT. We need to cast Mage's Attendant to keep the original instants moving while copies are on the stack. It is probably worth it to animate the swamp here and make some progress from that.
I suspect it is possible to get access to everything after cracking only one more treasure for TT. But worst case we need two treasures and still have 10 left.
Edit:
Duh, no Jin-Gitaxias copies we get from targeting it with Bury in Books can stick around without sending the original to the graveyard and fizzling the BiB. So we don't get a copy of Double Major and end up with one less WUG mana.
Start with a Path to the World Tree layer on the stack, Snow-Covered Swamp and Plains in hand, Skyclave Shade in the graveyard:
1. put the swamp into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap it for G.
2. use G to cast Roiling Regrowth getting a bunch of copies. Resolve a copy to sacrifice Skyclave Shade.
3. put the plains into play. Resolve the landfall trigger and cast Skyclave Shade. Tap them for WG.
4. resolve more Roiling Regrowth copies to sacrifice Skyclave Shade and both basics.
5. use W to cast Thraben Exorcism on Boseiju Reaches Skyward. That gets both basics into the library.
(6.) resolve 2 trigger form the layer on the stack to get the basics back to hand.
So we generate G for every two Orvar triggers on Path to the World Tree. Enough to accumulate X green before putting a big G stage on the stack.
We now need the Snow-Covered Swamp throughout the combo, so we can't exile it to Culmination of Studies anymore. But playing an extra exilable instant/sorcery instead of the Forest is way better.
So we can use Vanquish the Weak + Choose your Weapon instead of Plummet + Mammoth Growth, which is a cool idea. By itself it doesn't seem to do anything, except rule out Weigh Down from the exilable spells. But if we could target Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant with Vanquish the Weak, then we could generate copies of our instants cheap enough and wouldn't need Rowan, Scholar of Sparks anymore.
And I think that can be achieved with Croaking Counterpart. That + Double Major can produce a non-legendary 1/1 Frog-Gitaxias in the start and later get exiled. So we can get to 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 18 -> 9.
I don't think it is possible to get a 1/1 Snow-Covered Swamp with Croaking Counterpart and Avalanche Caller. Since the Swamp copies wouldn't be creatures until we animate them individually. But if I missed something and it is possible to get a swamp that we can target with Vanquish the Weak, then that goes infinite.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. (17 life)
Cast Goldhound.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
1st Exile: Invoke the Winds. Untap the Spellbook.
2nd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. Get back For the Family. (4 cards in hand) Untap the Spellbook.
3rd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Xorn. Untap the Spellbook.
4th Exile: Tibalt's Trickery. Fetch Avalanche Caller. Mill 1 and cast Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. Untap the Spellbook.
5th Exile: Lorehold Command. Fetch Sea Gate Stormcaller. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste, and we sacrifice a land to draw 2 (6 cards in hand). Resolve Tibalt's Trickery to mill 1 and cast Orvar, the All-Form. Keep it on the stack.
Tap 5 of the creatures for 5 green mana. Exile Spara's Adjudicators from hand and let Xorn tap for blue (GGGU, 5 cards in hand)
Cast Double Major targeting the Orvar spell, get a SGS copy, resolve all of them. (3 Orvars, GG, 4 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family twice, targeting Orvar (9 Orvars, 2 cards in hand)
6th Exile: Bloody Betrayal. Build stack to look like this:
-----------
8x Orvar token creation
9x Aberrant Mind Sorcerer token creation
Bloody Betrayal (targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer)
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Turntimber Symbiosis
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Turntimber Symbiosis
-----------
Resolve down until the spellbook untaps. Tap Orvar and the Mind Sorcerer for GG, get instants and sorceries back (9 Orvars, GG, 2 cards in hand + 9ish instants/sorceries)
Cast For the Family 2 times, targeting Orvar and then Xorn (17 Orvars, 18 Xorns)
Resolve Turntimber Symbiosis to fetch Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant.
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Thieves' Tools. Get a Jin copy and let the copy resolve. Get 19 treasures.
In response to the original Thieves' Tools we can use those 19 treasures to increase the Xorn count. Doing the simple thing and doubling Orvars 17 times we get to more than 2^21 Xorns. We are missing the Arlinn, the Pack's Hope emblem, so we can't really get the G stage going, but we can probably do better than doubling.
Resolve the Thieves' Tools to get more than 2^21 treasures. Certainly enough to get access to the entire combo quickly and then go through it.
Edit: Ah, I didn't notice that your previous list had 61 cards, so 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 17 -> 8 should be correct.
I used 2 copies of Double Major for the start, so another one should be among the "exilable spells". Though apart from the spells used during the start the composition of those doesn't really matter. I think there is still enough room to have one of them be Culmination of Studies for that little bit of extra value we get from exiling the Snow-Covered Swamp.
Edit:
Weigh Down is an exilable spell that gives us some miniscule improvement by turning superfluous creature cards into green mana, which is worth slightly more than the black it costs
For a more serious improvement, can we use Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer, Unleash the Inferno and Meeting of the Five instead of Markov Retribution to get an additional layer?
Edit2: Err, Cabaretti Charm + Meeting of the Five would be easier and one less card.
What would be the problem with fetching Rowan? getting extra emblems from the -4 wouldn't hurt anything. And the -1 deals damage to the opponent. We can't deal excess damage to them without ending the game, so this can never trigger Toralf, God of Fury. And it is limited by the opponents life anyway.
Getting Will, Scholar of Frost to draw cards could be bad. But we don't have a cheap way to get that one back into the graveyard. And as it is the back-side of the card I don't think we can get him with Confront the Past anyway.
Edit:
We don't need Vault Robber anymore, we start with treasures from Thieves' Tools.
Valakut Awakening can be exiled after leaving a copy on the stack. To reuse Thieves' Tools we then spend 2 Lithoform Engines. One to copy Spectral Steel's ability and one to copy Valakut Awakening.
So I think we have 16 exilable spells after the start to reach 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 17 -> 8.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. (17 life)
Turn 1:
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. (17 life)
Cast Goldhound.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
1st Exile: Invoke the Winds. Untap the Spellbook.
2nd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. Get back For the Family. (4 cards in hand) Untap the Spellbook.
3rd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Xorn. Untap the Spellbook.
4th Exile: Tibalt's Trickery. Fetch Avalanche Caller and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. Mill 1. Untap the Spellbook.
5th Exile: Lorehold Command. Fetch Sea Gate Stormcaller. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste, and we sacrifice a land to draw 2 (6 cards in hand). Resolve Tibalt's Trickery to cast Orvar, the All-Form. Keep it on the stack.
Tap 5 of the creatures for 5 green mana. Exile Spara's Adjudicators from hand and let Sea Gate Stormcaller tap for blue (GGGU, 5 cards in hand)
Cast Double Major targeting the Orvar spell, get a SGS copy, resolve all of them. (3 Orvars, GG, 4 cards in hand)
6th Exile: Tibalt's Trickery. Build stack to look like this:
-----------
2x Orvar token creation
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Turntimber Symbiosis
Turntimber Symbiosis
-----------
Resolve down to the first trickery and tap Orvar for G (5 Orvars, GGG, 4 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family twice, targeting Orvar (17 Orvars, G, 2 cards in hand)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Bloody Betrayal, targeting Sea Gate Stormcaller. Get 17 token copies. Untap it and tap for U
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery, mill 1 and cast Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. In response cast Double Major and get 17 SGS copies. Let everything resolve to end up with 19 Jins. (1 card in hand)
7th Exile: Bloody Betrayal. Build stack to look like this:
-----------
19x Jin copy of Bloody Betrayal
32x Orvar token creation
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Bloody Betrayal)
Turntimber Symbiosis
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Turntimber Symbiosis
Bloody Betrayal (targeting Orvar)
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Resolve down to the Tibalt's Trickeries, tapping creatures for 19 more mana and going up to 49 Orvars. Use all that mana on For the Family: Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, 17x Orvar, Jin. This gets us to 3*2^21+1=6291457 Orvars and as many fresh Jins.
Then we cast Bloody Betrayal of Tibalt's Trickery to get more mana and do it again: more than 2^6291479 Orvars and fresh Jins.
We have another Tibalt's Trickery to go to more than 2^2^6291479 Orvars, Jins and Xorns.
Resolve Turntimber Symbiosis to fetch Scaled Herbalist, resolve Lorehold Command to give it haste and put the Snow-Covered Swamp into play. Use the black mana to cast Thieves' Tools and get some some Jin copies, each of which creates a few treasure tokens.
I have not tried getting Jin-Gitaxias earlier, since we'd then need Bury in Books to cast it again before we can create non-legendary copies. But that could be something to explore for improvements.
I think I have an additional layer.
- Targeting Lithoform Engine with a Wizard's Spellbook activation gives us X untapped copies; or casting it gives us X Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant copies.
- Each of those can copy a Spectral Steel ability to return Thieves' Tools to hand. Casting that gives us X Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant copies.
- Each one of those gets us X treasures via Xorn.
1 layer more than our current activations of the Spellbook. But I don't know if we can hook it into combat somehow.
Since we can only activate Spellbook as a sorcery we need a new Spectral Steel ability each time we want to use it this way. So max 4 times. Then 4 more casts of Lithoform Engine (at instant speed via Tibalt's Trickery).
Edit: I guess we would also need Valakut Awakening to put the Thieves' Tools into the library in order to cast those at instant speed.
Edit2: Lithoform Engine can copy a Wizard's Spellbook activation at instant speed with Spectral Steels ability on the stack, so the exilable instants/sorceries remain the limiting resource.
Edit3:
For the start without using Orvar, the All-Form wrong:
We will need some card to create that first Orvar token. It is quite annoying that Croaking Counterpart can't target Orvar. >_<
Options like Necroduality seem to be worse for the start than just running a second copy of Orvar. And with that I can't quite manage to get started with 5 exiles, but 6 exiles shouldn't be a problem. So we lose out on 1 exilable spell from running an additional creature and 1 from the slower start.
The other possibility would be running Double Major, which could take care of the initial token creation and replace Mirror Box, while being exilable. To tie the 6 exiles option above we could take up to 8 exiles for the start. But 7 exiles might be doable.
Play Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass untapped. (17 life)
Cast Goldhound.
Turn 2:
Play Forest.
Cast For the Family targeting Goldhound. Leave it on the stack.
Tap the remaining land and sacrifice the Goldhound to cast Tibalt's Trickery, targeting the For the Family. Counter it, mill 3 cards, then exile and cast Wizard's Spellbook. (3 cards in hand)
1st Exile: Invoke the Winds. Untap the Spellbook.
2nd Exile: Turntimber Symbiosis. Fetch Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Untap the Spellbook.
3rd Exile: Tibalt's Trickery. Cast Invoke the Wind first, then Tibalt's Trickery, countering it. Use the Jin copy to untap Spellbook. Get Orvar, the All-Form and Mirror Box. Mill 1.
4th Exile: Lorehold Command. Don't cast Tibalt's Trickery. Command targets Orvar to create a token. Get Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Untap the Spellbook. Command gives all creatures indestructible and haste.
Tap Orvar, Jin and Ashaya for G. (3 G, 3 cards in hand)
Cast For the Family 3 times: Orvar, Orvar, Jin. (8 Orvars, 8 fresh Jins)
5th Exile: Bloody Betrayal. Cast spells, stack should look something like this:
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16x Orvar token creation.
8x Jin-copy of Turntimber Symbiosis
Lorehold Command (targeting Orvar + indestructible, haste)
Bloody Betrayal (targeting Orvar)
Invoke the Winds (targeting Wizard's Spellbook)
Tibalt's Trickery (targeting Turntimber Symbiosis)
Turntimber Symbiosis
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Get the Orvar tokens, put Xorn, Vault Robber, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and 5 other creatures into play. Get For the Family back from GY. Give those creatures haste and tap them for G. Untap Orvar and tap it for G. Untap the Spellbook.
Cast For the Family targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. 24 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family 8 times (7x Orvar, then Jin) and get at least one copy back to hand in the end. (24*2^7=3*2^10=3072 Orvars)
Resolve Tibalt's Trickery and cast Bloody Betrayal targeting Orvar (6144 Orvars). Get 3072 Jin copies of Bloody Betrayal. Use one of the untaps on the hasty Vault Robber. Use the rest to generate 3072 G.
Cast For the Family targeting Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. 6144 tokens are enough to bring back and cast For the Family another 3069 times targeting Orvar. We end up with 3*2^11*2^3069=3*2^3080 Orvars. (number has 928 digits)
Cast For the Family targeting Xorn, get token copies. Then exile the first creature (Goldhound) with Vault Robber to create 3*2^3080+2 treasures.
We still have 3074 Blood tokens and a few instants/sorceries in hand, so using some of that mana to get access to the entire deck and go through the full combo will not be a problem.
So 5 exiles with Vault Robber is possible on turn 2.
Without randomness we can use 1 more card and play Biblioplex Assistant. But if that is something we want to do we should also play 2 extra copies of Tibalt's trickery so no matter how much that spell mills we cast the same card. Mill randomness at the start seems unavoidable, but I find that more acceptable than randomness throughout the entire combo.
Starting on turn 2 we can't use Scaled Herbalist to get a 4th mana, so there is no extra red from the land drop. That means we can't go straight into Culmination of Studies after 5 exiles. I think it is likely that 5 exiles with Vault Robber can still get us started. That would be one less exilable spell, but we should work out the start again to make sure.