MTG Salvation

So, I had an interesting idea - let's say we wanted to go back to using Boggart Mob. We can target it using for example Godtoucher, but unfortunately Godtoucher also targets Child of Alara, so we can go through the megastage transition without spending the life. But here's a possibility - we could replace Mimic Vat and Horobi, Death's Wail with Soul Foundry and Brudiclad, Techor Engineer. So, instead of creating tokens by destroying them via Mimic Vat, we use Cowardice to send them back to our hand and imprint them on a Soul Foundry. Now, when we tap Godtoucher, we can target Child of Alara, but we can't destroy it.

It would be nice if we could now get rid of Mimic Vat, but unfortunately I don't see how we are going to create token copies of our enchantments. I had an idea that we could go back to using Splinter Twin and Crown of the Ages, but for now, let's just keep Mimic Vat in the deck.

So perhaps we can start with something like:



8 stages would be great, but I imagine there's a problem or two in there.

Hmm, we could throw in a third color, and have to crack an Explosives for 3 to destroy Tajuru Archer, which would waste an Explosives. That would nullify Centaur Safeguard, of course, so we need a replacement, but it could be a good way to solve those two particular problems.


Edit: Okay, so going with Tajuru Archer handles the problem of creating two Moggcatchers with one run through the combo. But, it still doesn't handle the problem of creating an unwanted Metallurgeon token. I believe you can do the same thing as what I described before: Create a stage for Metallurgeon, then each time you sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Beastcaller Savant, you also destroy the original Metallurgeon, and can create a token copy of it, allowing you to extend the Metallurgeon stage. So I don't know how to handle this.

Can we go back to Scattershot Archer? Maybe something like:

Oh right, we can use Mimic Vat to get two uses of Engineered Explosives. But, don't we run into the danger of using both Explosives to kill Moggcatcher? We just need to bounce Moggcatcher once to create a bank of Bloodbond March triggers.

I'm thinking that Metallurgeon still goes infinite. We can use our Metallurgeon tokens to create a stage, with Bloodbond March triggers on the top. We can then crack an Explosives to destroy both Wirewood Herald and Metallurgeon, creating tokens of both. We use the Wirewood Herald trigger to return it to our hand, and then resolve a Bloodbond March trigger to return Metallurgeon to the battlefield. Use the Metallurgeon token to extend the stage by a couple layers. Cast the Herald to bounce Moggcatcher, sacrifice Goblin Dark-Dwellers, creating a token copy, make the hyperstage transition, get Explosives back with Rebuild, and sacrifice it again to destroy Herald and Metallurgeon again. Create a couple more layers of the Metallurgeon stage, play Moggcatcher for Bloodbond March triggers and destroy it with the Herald, and create a Moggcatcher token. Tap the token to bring back Dark-Dwellers, and get Explosives back, going back to where we started, but with four more layers in the Metallurgeon stage.

Wait, how does Wirewood Herald and Lys Alana Bowmaster handle both the destruction and retrieval of Moggcatcher? Each time we destroy Wirewood Herald, we get to retrieve Wirewood Herald once, and that allows us to cast it once, getting one batch of targetings of Moggcatcher.

We do need a hasted token of Rust Tick to do anything artifact-wise, so we do need to dip into Psychic Battle triggers wherever those are on the stack. The potential problem is that we can use a PB trigger to destory the nontoken Rust Tick, create a Rust Tick token, tap the hasted Muzzio to retrieve the nontoken Rust Tick, target it with the next PB trigger, and create another Rust Tick token. I haven't gone into a deep analysis but it looks infinite.

I have to think more about whether Metallurgeon can go infinite.

Assuming we can make it all work, I wonder about the possibility of removing Verdant Succession and Natural Order to free up green creatures - without Possessed Centaur I don't know how to do 6 stages in less than 10 cards, so we would need to make the change without adding any more cards. Something to think about.

Also, with Scattershot Archer instead of target fliers/Humans, that would free up Humans anc fliers to be used as transition creatures, or possibly in mana stages... not sure what we can make of that.

Oof, lots of problems then. Nice improvement with Tribal Unity.

Though, I'm wondering now if being able to target Muzzio, Visionary Architect does in fact go infinite. My earlier reasoning was that we have to give up creating a hasted Muzzio token in order to get one later by targeting the nontoken. But, that can still help, provided you give up a token in the higher hyperstage to create one in the lower hyperstage. So I'm thinking we can go infinite there.

Of course, Metallurgeon has the same problem with being able to be targeted. But, when we destroy Wirewood Herald, we also destroy all Metallurgeons - can that save us?

Very interesting idea! At first glance, I'm not seeing anywhere where we need to switch from Anaba Ancestor to Rust Tick without going through a Rebuild, so I don't see yet how it can resolve the Anaba Ancestor issue. Still, Chalice of the Void has some interesting potential to possibly stop infinites, so it's something to keep in mind.


Edit: Okay, let me try and analyze the Anaba Ancestor situation again. First thing I just noticed, after Rebuild resolves, we can get one Mirrorworks artifact, and therefore two each of Mimic Vat, Mirror of Fate, and Perpetual Timepiece before we ever encounter another Psychic Battle trigger for Rust Tick again. So, we won't be able to do what we originally wanted, which was to build a ministage of Anaba Ancestors, while casting Rebuilds from the top, because we will run out of necessary artifacts. To make it work, we need to sprinkle in Rust Tick Psychic Battle triggers amidst all the Anaba Ancestor triggers.

So first, I will analyze the combo without Chalice of the Void.

Perhaps the way we want to do things is like so - set up the stack as:

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

...

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

Hyperstage transition stuff

PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

...

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

Hyperstage transition stuff

PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

...

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

Hyperstage transition stuff

...
...


So, after we resolve out the highest stage, we resolve the hyperstage transition, casting Rebuild and bringing Engineered Explosives back to out hand along with all our other artifacts. We put a Vedalken Orrery trigger at the bottom of the hyperstage transition, so we get a token coming into play. We have enough artifacts to do our usual thing with the Anaba Ancestor stage; use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy Anaba Ancestor, imprint it on a Mimic Vat, use Mirror of Fate to bring it back to the library, and Perpetual Timepeice to put it back in the graveyard. We still have Bloodbond March triggers, but we are out of Mirror of Fates, so we are forced to resolve down to the Psychic Battle triggers for Rust Tick to create some needed artifacts, and also a hasted Rust Tick token. After we get the required amount, we can tap our newly created Anaba Ancestor token to get a batch of Psychic Battle triggers, use one to bounce Anaba Ancestor, and create a batch of Bloodbond March triggers. Next, we play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and gain the token back. Tap the token to get a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, and after we have prepared for the hyperstage transition, use the top Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, and we can get started with the hyperstage transtion.

So the top of our stack looks like this:

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

...

PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

Hyperstage transition stuff

PB triggers for AA
BM triggers for AA
PB triggers for AA
(smaller stack of) PB triggers for RT
BM triggers for RT

...
...

After we resolve again, the top three batches generate one token, but now Anaba Ancestor goes back to our hand. So, after getting the necessary artifacts and the hasted Rust Tick token, we can play the Anaba Ancestor nontoken, getting a bunch of BM triggers, tap the hasted token to get a bunch of PB triggers, then bounce the nontoken and get another bunch of BM triggers. Sacrifice Explosives to kill of Anaba Ancestor, getting another token, resolve out the BM triggers to get down to the PB layer below. Now enter the hyperstage transition, but this time with an Anaba Ancestor hasted token on the battlefield. I think at this point there is nothing stopping us from creating another stage with an Anaba Ancestor set of layers on top, so we can create another stage on top of that. So this looks infinite.


Okay, how about with Chalice of the Void? With this setup, after the hyperstage transition we can replay Chalice of the Void for 2. This allows us to get Bloodbond March triggers for Anaba Ancestor, but not for Rust Tick. But, we didn't need to replay Rust Tick for Bloodbond March triggers, provided we had a healthy stack of Psychic Battle triggers at the top of the Rust Tick part of the stack. After a couple of transitions we can create another two stages above, and don't need to resolve down to this stage again. So this is looking infinite.

So, this looks like bad news.


Edit: Hmm, what if we switch to Metallurgeon? Then, if we do things exactly the same, then, after we sacrifice the Explosives, we destroy all our Metallurgeons, and we can't go into the higher stage and gain any benefit from it. What we can do is double dip - we first resolve down to the Metallurgeon stack to get the Psychic Battle triggers necessary for the artifacts to keep going, then we build the Anaba Ancestor stack back up, and sacrifice the Explosives. We then resolve back down again to generate our Metallurgeon tokens. But, each time we resolve down, we lose half a step in our Anaba Ancestor stack, so after double dipping we have lost a token's worth of the stack. So this exactly compensates for the extra token from Engineered Explosives! Do we have the winning ticket here?


Edit: With the hope that the above is correct, I tried to make a deck:


The Tireless Missionaries / Celestial Gatekeeper interaction seems nice, although perhaps not the most efficient. (It also prevents me from using Possessed Aven down below, so something else could be better for the lifegain.) There are two Changeling Heros to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Omniscience. Looking at it again though, we don't have a way to get back Horobi, Death's Wail and Titania, Protector of Argoth. I suppose we could add Goryo's Vengeance for them both.

Hmm, those are some serious problems.

I thought about using Natural Order to gain lots of life, but I ran into problems trying to do so. We can sacrifice one green creature when we cast it, after than we need ways to get Nylea's Disciple from the battlefield to the library. Child of Alara could do it, so we could certainly gain lots of life by repeatedly destroying Child of Alara, moving Nylea's Disciple to the library with Reclaim, and bringing it back with a copy of Natural Order. But, destroying Child of Alara kills of Vedalken Orrery, which eliminates our ability to take advantage of our newly gained life before Worldfire resolves. So I don't know how to make it work.

Another problem in the Moggcatcher deck: While we do gain one Moggcatcher token per destruction of Wirewood Herald, each Moggcatcher allows to use Goblin Dark-Dwellers twice, once when we bring back the original, and another time when we create a Mimic Vat token after we sacrifice the original.

Yeah, Skyshroud Archer is a problem since if we add another Archer, we can get 2 Coastal Drakes per Engineered Explosives by feeding off the same Bloodbond March set of triggers. So, I would like to use Scattershot Archer, along with something to bring back Coastal Drake. Obviously something that would bring back fliers would be nice, but I don't know of any such cards. The only thing I can think of is adding another Coastal Drake and Assembly Hall. This messes up Nylea's Disciple, since we have two of those. But, what do have Goblin Dark-Dwellers entering the battlefield after the Child of Alara trigger, so we could use that opportunity to bring Nylea's Disciple to the library so that it can be brought back by Verdant Succession. We only want to bring one creature back though, since if we can bring back more then we can bring back Scattershot Archer to boost our devotion. So no Bone Harvest; Reclaim seems good.

After all the changes, we end up using five more cards, reducing us to four stages:



So, worse than the older version. The extra five cards can be entirely attributed to replacing Smite the Monstrous with Brace for Impact; that requires adding another instant, which in turn requires adding Copy Enchantment. Also, we lose Centaur Safeguard, which means adding another card to set up Nylea's Discple, and also Natural Order and Spider Spawning. So finding a replacement for Brace for Impact would be great, but I don't have any ideas at the moment.

Yeah, probably 25-30. (We can mill some cards to avoid drawing them.)

Ah, I see the problem with bouncing and destroying Moggcatcher. Nice ideas on how to fix it. I think Scattershot Archer could avoid that problem, if it is coupled with a way to bring Moggcatcher back from the graveyard; then there is no need to bounce it for Bloodbond March triggers, so it is just a matter of balancing created and used Moggcatchers.

Before I saw your post, I made a deck with Changeling Hero. I guess the Skyshroud Archer bit doesn't quite work, but perhaps it is close:



Perhaps seven stages should be possible, but I didn't see a way. We will probably need the spare card slots anyway.

I'm a little confused; I picked Coastal Drake _because_ it had flying, so that it could be targeted by Skyshroud Archer or Scattershot Archer. Is that a problem? If it is, there are certainly creatures that can target Changeling Hero that don't have flying.

Looking at the old version, I had an idea that we could go back to Skyshroud Archer if we used Muzzio, since I didn't see a way to go infinite by targeting it; if it doesn't, then we can go:



Room for a seven card ending sequence, not bad. Thousand-Year Storm gives us two layers for every instant/sorcery, so Sphinx's Revelation is quite efficient.

I'm not sure how to save foor with Tajuru Archer and Beastcaller Savant; did the old version have a Battle stacking problem?

Ah, that's a nice combo to use Muzzio!. Looks like that's back on the table.

The idea I had for avoiding Championing Vedalken Orrery was to make Championing Goblin Dark-Dwellers necessary to keep it from getting lost to the graveyard. That has the added effect of keeping Dark-Dwellers out of our hand after a megastage/gigastage transition, so we don't get to use it for an extra Explosives.

Very interesting! I haven't quite gotten to grips with the new plan, but it looks quite promising. Traditionally, we have made sure that Rebuild and Battle Cry were tied together, because if you cast them separately, you had to worry about forgoing the casting of one Battle Cry to get an extra casting of Rebuild, and profit one hyperstage resource. But, I guess the idea here is that we get a stack of Psychic Battle triggers with no way to get Vedalken Orrery back in between, so we can only get one Engineered Explosives back per batch of Psychic Battle triggers. Makes sense.

But yeah, figuring out how to soak up those extra Engineered Explosives has always been the hardest part of making this deck. Here's an idea: make it so Changeling Hero has to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers to survive destruction by Child of Alara. We can either figure out another way to get back Omniscience (maybe by going back to blue mana), or add a second Changeling Hero so we can Champion both cards. That means we can't use Smite the Monstrous since we could use it to bring Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to our hand. But then, what would the benefit instant in the megastage transition be? We can't bounce Dark-Dwellers, so we would need some other way to create lots of Anaba Ancestor tokens. I don't know what that would be. Also, that still leaves Engineered Explosives itself, which we can't stop from being able to return to our hand in the higher hyperstage.


Edit: Continuing with the above idea, we could bounce Changeling Hero in the megastage transition rather than Goblin Dark-Dwellers. I don't know any instant with CMC 4 or higher that targets a particular creature type, but we could go with say Winged Sliver and Gloomwidow's Feast. We would need another way to target Child of Alara of course, with Brace for Impact (or Maze Glider) being the obvious way, which eliminates Centaur Safeguard.


Edit: Or maybe just Into Thin Air, to bounce Engineered Explosives directly.


Edit: Sigh... it looks like having a hyperstage creature that can tap to target itself along with bringing back Engineered Explosives to gain another token goes infinite. Let's say we play Anaba Ancestor, getting a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. We play and sacrifice Engineered Explosives, destroying Anaba Ancestor and gaining a token copy. Bring back Anaba Ancestor with a Bloodbond March trigger. Bounce Vedalken Orrery, and put a Vedalken Orrery Mirrorworks trigger on the stack. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to destroy the original Anaba Ancestor, creating another hasted token. Use a Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Changeling Hero, bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers from exile. This allows us to cast Rebuild, which brings Engineered Explosives back to our hand after we bring it back to the battlefield with Salvaging Station. Resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger for Anaba Ancestor (getting a Vedalken Orrery token in the meantime), and bring it back from the graveyard. Tap the Anaba Ancestor token to create a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers, then use one to bounce the original Ancestor. Replay it for a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers. So we have another set of PB and BM layers. Now we can replay and sacrifice Engineered Explosives to destroy Anaba Ancestor and create another token, and we can repeat the process, but each time get another set of layes. So this looks infinite.

The only hope I think is that I haven't accounted for Metallurgeon tokens to do the artifact bouncing that we need to do... We keep casting Rebuild, which clears out our artifacts. So maybe that saves us; I need to analyze that next.

Anyway, even if we lose out on Anaba Ancestor, we can still use Changeling Hero to Champion Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So we can use some low CMC creature that can tap to target some creature type other than itself. I've forgotten the good candidates for that... Dwarven Pony? Then we need to find a way to bring it back after getting destroyed by Engineered Explosives. We could always still use Skyshroud Archer, along with say Winged Sliver, although that moots flying creatures.


Edit: Other good possibilities for creature type targeters are Kitsune Diviner, Goblin Digging Team, King Suleiman, and Otepec Huntmaster.


Edit: Hmmm, I just remembered that we need we can't use just the creature that gets exploded, because we can't accumulate tokens for them. (unless it is a self-targeting creature, but I believe that goes infinite) So we need another creature. One possibility is to use Skyshroud Archer, and target Coastal Drake. That makes us want to use Muzzio even more, since Coastal Drake uses blue mana. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to target Muzzio in the new setup - the only way I see to target it is to give Humans flying again, and then the deck is much the same as the previous one.

Hmm... if we replace Consecrated Sphinx with Thousand-Year Storm, the second Words of Wisdom will let us draw six cards. We can draw Mirror of Fate, Perpetual Timepiece, Spellweaver Volute, a sorcery, Consecrated Sphinx, and another card. (possibly another instant or sorcery) That gives us five or six instances of Words of Wisdom on the stack, the first of which draws four cards; we can start working on increasing the number of Consecrated Sphinxes on the battlefield, although at some point we need to figure out how to get another casting of Words of Wisdom. With at least 24 draws incoming if need be, I'm confident we can figure out a way.

Ah yes, Vision Skeins is certainly a possibility. Although, are we totally sure that drawing 4 cards is not enough? (Maybe it is obvious, I haven't really checked.)

Once the first Muzzio is killed, we use Mimic Vat to make a token copy. Then, each time we use Goryo's Vengeance, we bring back the nontoken, sacrifice it using the Legendary rule, make another token copy, and sacrifice the old token after we use it.

Oh right, we did do a sideboard version. It's something we can think about - we definitely want to get rid of Verdant Succession and Woodland Bellower for that, and perhaps also switch from Smite the Monstrous back to Gloomwidow's Feast and [c]Brace for Impact[/]? That would free up both green creatures and power > 3 creatures, we could conceivably make quite a long stage sequence...