MTG Salvation

Even though decks like this one should be the definition of insanity, this one is very understandable, especially compared to the other insane decks that try for the highest non-infinite amount of damage possible. That said, there about a Metric ****-Ton of stuff going on. Because of the card that helped inspire this one and makes it work, I call it The Paradox of Infinity without Infinite.


Cards 1-3
This deck starts with Black Lotus for three Blue Mana to cast Show and Tell to get Omniscience. From there we play any card we want for free. No "in theory only deck" is complete without this combo.

(If you're playing against a troll instead of the 60 Waste Deck this challenge is meant for, he will get a Black Lotus off of Show and Tell.)


Cards 4-6
Now that we can play cards for free, we start with Opalescence, Doubling Season, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. Opalescence makes it so enchantments, like Doubling Season, are creatures which can then be cloned by Kiki-Jiki. We want as many Doubling Seasons as possible, so we start cloning them as soon as possible.


Cards 7-9
Maelstorm Wanderer "Draws" two cards with Cascade, Cascade and we get two cards that give us what we need. The first Cascade hits Paradox Engine which lets us untap our creatures when we cast a spell, including one from the second cascade. Selvala, Explorer Returned (AKA Selvala V1) lets us draw cards because Maelstorm Wanderer gives our creatures haste. Now, use Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season and Selvala V1 to draw. Do that again whenever Paradox Engine untaps them, (but stop using Selvala V1 after when there's 24 cards left in library.)


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap Selvala V1.

This list will be updated when we add more cards.


Card 10
Selvala V1 has been making Mana and in this deck nothing goes to waste. Aura of Dominion puts it to use. It's a rarely use enchantment that allows you to pay one mana and tap a creature to untap the enchanted creature. In normal MTG, it sucks. In this deck, there are no words good enough for it. Enchant Kiki-Jiki and spare mana can be used to clone Doubling Season. You can see why we played it as soon as possible.


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap Selvala V1 and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.


Card 11
Selvala V1 makes both players draw a card and we don't want to make our opponent draw so we play Consecrated Sphinx and clone it with Kiki-Jiki once. When we tap Selvala V1, we let 24 Consecrated Sphinx's abilities draw us two cards each plus the one from Selvala V1 totaling 49, the number of cards in the rest of our deck. (Save Selvala V1's Mana for the next card.)


Card 12
The next card is Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. (AKA Selvala V2) Selvala V2 makes mana equal to the greatest power among creatures you control at the cost of one Green mana. (By the way, guess what Selvala V1's Draw ability makes.)


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap Selvala V2 and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.


Card 13
Selvala V2 is a very nice card because her effectiveness scales with your biggest creature. Hamletback Goliath is, what is for this deck, the biggest possible because it scales with the growth. It gets +1/+1 counters when a creature enters the battlefield which are then multiplied by Doubling Season. (multiply instead of doubled feels like the right word to me when your doubling countless times.)


Cards 14-17
Precursor Golem's synergy with over half the deck makes it a must have. Even though its main use comes much later, we play it now so we can copy an artifact creature with Sculpting Steel. With Sculpting Steel as a creature, it can be sacrificed by Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter and imprinted onto Mimic Vat. (From now on, this will be called Sac-Vatting.) We will need more Mimic Vats so we activate Sculpting Steel's Mimic Vat to get two more. The rest of the Sculpting Steels can copy Precursor Golem because that's more useful. After you tap Selvala V2, Sac-Vat her and activate her Mimic Vat to “untap” her.


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap Selvala V2 and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.
3: Use Selvala V2's Mimic Vat and Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.


Card 18
You may think the Legend rule is annoying when you have a Mimic Vat with a Legend, but we can just get rid of that rule with Mirror Gallory. At this point, the deck starts getting stupid because not only can you have duplicate Selvala V2s, but you can now have multiple Paradox Engines. That's the main use for Sculpting Steel's Mimic Vat.


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap One Selvala V2 for Mana and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.
3: Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
4: Use Selvala V2's Mimic Vat and Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
5: If this is the last Paradox Engine Trigger, Use Sculpting Steel's Mimic Vat for Paradox Engines.

If five steps is intimidating, remember that three of them are step two and step one is half of step two, and step five doesn't happen often.


Card 19

Cathars' Crusade gives a small (relatively speaking) boost to Selvala V2's ability to make mana by making it so when a creature enters the battlefield it gets "one" +1/+1 counter which then gets multiplied by Doubling Season. Hamletback Goliath's ability then activates and the counters it gets get multiplied again. For Maximum effect, clone Doubling Season without letting the abilities resolve. There will be more creatures to get counters and more Doubling Seasons to multiply them than if you let the abilities resolve.

Buffing Hamletback Goliath more isn't a good enough reason to run a card. Buffing over half the deck, on the other hand, is. Over half of this deck is spells that care about a creature's power and/or toughness. If you're not understanding why we wouldn't want to just target Hamletback Goliath with those spells, I'd like to remind you that we have Precursor Golem.


Cards 20-26
Even though the cycle is assembled, we still need a little more preparation so that we can do it as much as possible.

Playing these cards is preparation. Eldrazi Monument and Vedalken Orrery let you play Sever Soul as though it's just a life gain instant. Xenograft lets you do the same with Death's Caress if you pick Human and amplifies Precursor Golem's spell amplification if you pick Golem. You'll need to Sac-Vat Xenograft for both because cloning one will get you more of a version with the same creature. Swarm Intelligence and Boon Reflection replicate and amplify your spells respectively. Play Kheru Spellsnatcher face down. It's easier to explain the use of it and Augur of Bolas later. Because of Boon Reflection, we get to add another conditional step to the Paradox Cycle.


To do on each Paradox Engine Trigger:

1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap One Selvala V2 for Mana and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.
3: Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
4: Use Selvala V2's Mimic Vat and Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
5: If this is the last Paradox Engine Trigger, Use Sculpting Steel's Mimic Vat for Paradox Engines.
6: If the next thing that happens makes you gain life, tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Boon Reflection once.


Card 27
We need to activate the Paradox Cycle as many times as possible and we do that with Wydwen, the Biting Gale. Being able to pay one life to unsummon her makes it so we can repetitively summon and unsummon her. (Using all but one of your life Summoning and Unsummoning Wydwen will be called the Wydwen Dance from now on.) Selvala V1 made us gain life when we drew cards with her, so our Life Total is 22. That means we can do the Wydwen Dance 21 times without dying.


Side Note
If you've looked at the list of cards in this deck before reading how to use the deck, you might have been confused about why over half of the deck is life gain spells. By now, you're probably feeling like the effect of those life gain spells is ether hilarious, disturbing, overkill, or all of the above.


Cards 28-59
Before you cast a spell, clone Precursor Golem. Each life gain spell has a single target, so Precursor Golem will copy that spell for each other Golem you control. Swarm Intelligence also copies instants sorceries, even if they don't target a Golem, but only once.

When using the life gain spells, start with targeting your weakest creature with it and ordering the stack so that Swarm Intelligence's ability resolves before Precursor Golem's, so that when Precursor Golem's resolves there's more targets. Needless to say, you want to target the Hamletback Goliath with Swarm Intelligence's copies. With Precursor Golem's copies, you want them to order from weakest target to strongest. After a copy of the spell resolves, do the Wydwen Dance. Radiate technically isn't a life gain spell, but you're targeting Predator's Rapport with it, so it's close enough. For Radiate, clone Swarm Intelligence instead of Precursor Golem.


Card 60
Before I get into this part, please let me brag. I found a use for the card everyone agrees is the worst Mythic where it outclasses every other option!

It's time for Archangel's Light to shine!

Once you've cast all you life gain spells, clone Swarm Intelligence and use Archangel's Light to shuffle your spells back into your library. After each copy resolves, we do the Wydwen Dance, clone Augur of Bolas to “draw” the deck, then use the life gain spells the way we did before.

When we're down to just the original Archangel's Light on the stack, we pay the morph cost of Kheru Spellsnatcher to turn it face up it and counter then recast Archangel's Light. When the second to last Archangel's Light is about to resolve, sacrifice Kheru Spellsnatcher to so Archangel's Light can shuffle it back into your library. You can redraw it with Selvala V1, (and do the Weyden dance with the life gained) then play it face down again. (Augur of Bolas doesn't “draw” creatures.)

This may sound like an infinite combo, but the reason it isn't is because Selvala V1 Makes both players draw a card and Augur of Bolas can't “draw” creatures. Your opponent's library had 50 cards left when we started abusing Weaver of Lies. (We skipped two used of Selvala by using Maelstorm Wanderer to "draw" two cards and Consecrated Sphinx to "draw" 48 more.) You know you've taken "Everything is a resource" to an extreme when your opponent's deck is a resource in this way.


It may be hard to grasp the insanity when I'm going over the bigger steps without rementioning the smaller ones, so here's a recap of the insanity.


For each Kheru Spellsnatcher you copy Archangel's Light.
For each Archangel's Light you cast every life gain spell.
For each life summon and unsummon Wydwen, the Biting Gale
For each Wydwen, the Biting Gale summoning activate each Paradox Engine
For each Paradox Engine trigger do the thing

The Thing
1: Tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Doubling Season.
2: Tap One Selvala V2 for Mana and use your Spare Mana to Untap and Retap Kiki-Jiki.
3: Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
4: Use Selvala V2's Mimic Vat and Repeat Step 2 until you have no untapped Selvala V2s.
5: If this is the last Paradox Engine Trigger, Use Sculpting Steel's Mimic Vat for Paradox Engines.
6: If the next thing that happens makes you gain life, tap Kiki-Jiki to clone Boon Reflection once.



The Finale

End you main phase and move to combat.

Attack.


Thank you very much for reading. I mean it. One or two line posts take me about ten minutes to be happy with, this one took me four five days!