MTG Salvation

@hyp_cos: Usually the way we get creatures back on the battlefield is via Bloodbond March, but of course you need some way to bounce them in the hyperstage. I'll try to look at the decks when I have time.

I'm really busy this week, I think next week I'll drop a line to Stakfish and Iijil, and see if we can get these things hammered out...

Hmm, perhaps Illusionist's Bracers instead of Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient? We wouldn't be able to use Illusionist's Bracers on Clue tokens, but we get the same layer by getting a lot of Clue tokens because of Doubling Season.

The Search the Premises part gives us two layers, one for getting lots of triggers and one for getting a lot of Clue tokens each trigger, but yeah, there's probably better layer sequences out there.

Right, the first step is to get the main combo working, and once that's set up we can try to get started with as few cards as possible.

Ah, that's true. So maybe Flash is safe.

Stakfish had a trick for using only one Centaur Safeguard, but I don't remember what it is. We probably need to talk to him again.

I'm wondering of using Flash to kill Centaur Safeguard goes infinite - that seems to be the most dangerous use.

Goblin Welder isn't a main part of the combo like Muzzio I don't think, I believe it's there to recover after a Worldfire.

Another version of the deck appears here, with two Moggcatchers and a Goblin Turncoat.


1. Underground Sea is probably a holdover from an older version of the deck that used it to cast Show and Tell to start. It's not necessary in this deck, but probably wasn't changed because it didn't cause a problem.

2. I know we can use Smite the Monstrous to destroy Goblin Dark-Dwellers, but I'm not quite sure how we recycle it after the Smite the Monstrous spell copies have been used up.

3. This might be another case where we had March of the Machines instead of Karn, Silver Golem for no particular reason. I know there have been decks where Karn was too convenient, allowing us to single out artifacts that allowed for some kind of infinite. But I don't see any such problem here at first glance.

So, it looks like you're looking at a deck like this one. In that deck, we have Academy Rector and Misery Charm to put Omniscience into play.

It's been a while since I looked at this old version of the hyperstage, I'll study it further.

I think we can cast Battle Cry, resolve it, untapping our Metallurgeons, then cast Rebuild? We can then proceed with the higher stage with the spell Rebuild on the stack, not the trigger from Goblin Dark-Dwellers.

Yeah, we know about having to rebuild our numbers after a sweeper. Thousand-Year Storm is one way; we cast some instant or sorcery that gets plenty of copies that can rebuild our resources, like Battle Cry. Another possibility is some other card that depends on some number that gets large, like Vile Redeemer. More recently, we used delayed triggers from Sea Gate Stormcaller to maintain the number after a sweeper. So there are ways to handle rebuilding our resources.


Edit: Ah yeah, the Busy Beaver deck doesn't have a way to get artifacts back. We can use the last card slot for Steal Artifact, I think.

@hyp_cos: Hmm, so Metallurgeon + Battle Cry + Moggcatcher has possibilities. All right, let's see what we can do!


@FortyTwo: The layer sequence looks good, but to connect Consecrated Sphinx to Moraug, Fury of Akoum, we need to use something in combat to refill the opponent's library. Or actually, Uproot can already do that, so I think Blue Sun's Zenith plus Consecrated Sphinx goes infinite, since we after we resolve the original Blue Sun's Zenith there will be Consecrated Sphinx triggers, and we can put BSZ in the library before we resolve them.

Instead of Consecrated Sphinx, we can put in Search the Premises, which should result in 10 layers with a card slot left over.

The third w^4 deck was the Wirewood Herald deck, but it had most of the features of the Bramblewood Paragon deck, so it likely has similar problems.

I'm much more confident in the w^3 deck, since it doesn't have the Engineered Explosives hyperstage which was so complicated. It's described here, but again we can replace Swarm Intelligence and Vile Redeemer with Thousand-Year Storm to free up a card slot.


Edit: Oh, there were also the older w^4 decks with Skyshroud Archer, but I'm not sure which version would be the best to look at.

Faith of the Devoted was another card we looked at. The problem is that you have to control the number copies of Faith of the Devoted that you have on the battlefield. So not having Opalescence was an idea. But, since we needed 6 copies of Dralnu's Crusade, we would need to use something like 4 copies of Dralnu's Crusade and 2 copies of Copy Enchantment. Then, we could have 1 copy of Faith of the Devoted, which along with the two Copy Enchantments would give us 3, and then use the 6 life gained to cast [c}Army of tne Damned[/c].

But, that's a lot of used up card slots of course. Stern Constable tapping a Vampire Envoy looks better. (although that would kill the Stormfront stage)

@hyp_cos: I contacted Stakfish, he's on vacation, but said he was coming back today.

@Iijil: What do you think is the best approach for dealing with the hyperstage transition in the Busy Beaver deck?

Well, we can have it on the battlefield, and then bounce it back to our hand. So, when we get back down to the lower stage, if we can do the computation, then we can discard the Automaton to Urborg Syphon-Mage, gaining 2 life, and then resolve a Bloodbond March trigger for the Automaton to bring back it back to the battlefield. There may be something in the transition that prevents this, but I don't see it yet.

Hmm, what about Aegis Automaton? That isn't required for the computation, so if we can bring it back to our hand in the higher stage, we can discard it in the lower stage to gain 2 life.

Hmm, for the two black sorcery situation, we can cast Recoup from the graveyard, and that gives a black sorcery flashback. We then imprint Recoup on a Spellweaver Helix, and cast the black sorcery from the graveyard while another copy and Recoup are imprinted on Spellwever Helix. While the Spellweaver Helixes' triggers are on the stack, we put the black sorcery back in the library and mill it. Then we can resolve the triggers, and give the black sorcery flashback again. So we keep spending a black mana, and gain a lot more life/black mana with our beneficial sorcery. So yeah, that looks like a problem.

I'm pretty sure it's Muzzio, Visionary Architect generating the new Clockwork Gnomes tokens. I remember all the way back in the stage decks we realized that repeatedly fetching a creature card was enough to generate hasted tokens using a hasted tokens we already had, but I don't quite see how it's done at the moment.