It does seem like we can get close to getting started without II, but I haven't found anything either. Leinore does avoid needing another card to function, but if we need the combat draws to help access the rest of the deck, we'll need a lot more Leinores than we would need Sams.
Otherwise we can of course stick with Infectious Inquiry, and hopefully get more full combo draws. Search for Glory gets a few more legendary creatures, not a lot, so maybe we can get 3 or 4 SSA draws?
Edit: It looks like there are 11 creatures that are not legendary or artifacts. So we have 9 slots for draws of things besides those creatures or SSA (including the II and Worldfire that we need). If we want to get 2,3,4, or 5 SSA draws, we will have 8,6,4,2 slots respectively, so 3 or 4 is probably right.
Ah true, so we can create at least 21 Sams. I shouldn't say that we can get BB_{w^3 + w3 + 2}(21), since we may need to use a couple of Sams to build resources, but it should be high teens at least.
Hmm... if we want to cast SSA twice, then we need another draw of it of course, so we have 2 extra draws for random cards. Could be quite difficult. If we can only cast it once, then perhaps we're better off with another support card like Incarnation Technique.
Yeah, after looking at it some more, I don't see how to get it done.
Looking at the remaining options: Sam, Loyal Attendant really does look like a great card, but it doesn't pair with Smoke Spirits' Aid, and I believe SSA just wins, since it has to potential to allow us to do the full combo before we go into combat.
Ideally Infectious Inquiry would be the best card to pair with SSA, since it is the one support card among those we have been considering that can draw it. (other than Caress of Phyrexia, but that seems worse) Adding Veyran, but sticking with Panharmonicon and Mirror Gallery to otherwise minimize our creature count, we have 15 creatures we need to draw, along with SSA. With 3 extra card slots in our opening hand, we have 21 slots available, so we have 5 cards of slack. If we want to draw SSA on the 7th or 8th II, we have 1 card or 3 card slots of slack respectively. I believe FortyTwo managed it earlier with 4 cards of slack? That means we wouldn't be able to cast SSA and get the full combo going until the last II draw, so that we get one full combo from SSA. That can still be beaten with the other support cards, since we can draw SSA in our opening hand, and we just need to be able to cast it and get access to the remaining deck at some point.
But, maybe it's possible with fewer slack required; with 3 slack, we can still get two castings of SSA, which would definitively put us ahead of the support cards that can't draw SSA.
Actually, now that I think about it, with 4 slack, we can draw all but one creature, and still draw SSA on the 8th II. Then, we can cast and resolve SSA without doing the combo yet, then resolve the final II and draw the last creature and SSA again. So we can get 2 castings of SSA with 4 cards of slack. If we can cut that down to 2 cards of slack, we can cast SSA 3 times before combat, but that may be a tall order.
The idea behind attacking triggers like Jolene, the Plunder Queen is that we would add something that can put an attacker onto the battlefield, like Launch the Fleet. Of course, this uses up a card slot, so we lose the extra layer that we get from Jolene, and it winds up tying the other options we had.
Another nice benefit from going back to Mirror of Fate, is that we can no longer replenish the opponent's deck. So, cards like Sphinx of Enlightenment and Words of Wisdom are back in play. A nice ending sequence is
which should get us something like BB_{w^3 + w3 + 2}(X) with X around 50. This could theoretically be beaten by Glorious Sunrise or Sam, Loyal Attendant if we can get more than 50 copies at the beginning of combat, but that looks unlikely with no more supporting cards.
Edit: Oh, I guess we can donate copies of Mirror of Fate and the opponent can replenish their library themselves. Meh.
Hmm, Jolene gets a couple layers, but the need to put in a card just to make sure that we have an attacking creature nullifies the extra layer, so this combo winds up even with SSA + Glorious Sunrise. Also, SSA + Sunrise is extendible with Xorn / Precursor Golem / Teysa Karlov, whereas I don't know of any extensions for Jolene. (If the plan to remove Psychic Battle is correct, then we want 3-card ending sequences.)
Instead of Jolene though, we could have SSA + Search the Premises, where Search the Premises basically works like Jolene, producing a bunch of Clue token creations, each of which can draw increasingly more cards thanks to Ashnod. But again that ties it with the 3-card Glorious Sunrise options, since we need to add an attacker here as well.
Edit: Oh wait, we don't have a way to bring the Clue tokens to our control.
Hmm true... for all but the topmost stage, there are stages above it that can put the Pathmage into the library, since we only need to do it once, and we can make copies of Mirror of Fate with Fated Infatuation.
The other reason we need Riftsweeper /Mirror of Fate is to get our cards back after a Worldfire. This seems harder, since the exiling happens during the megastage transition, so we can't just tuck the cards in the library in the higher stage. But, it seems reasonable that we can resolve down to the next hyperstage transition, then after making a new transition we can get copies of Mirror of Fate, and use those to put Mirror of Fate activations on the stack below the megastage transition. So it looks like it's doable?
Yeah, there were times where we wanted to switch from Riftsweeper to Mirror of Fate, but it just doesn't look like we can recycle or copy it cheaply enough.
Edit: Looked at the opening a bit, seems pretty hard without Path of the Schemer. Presumably you break out Chromescale Drake early, maybe with Yarok or Panharmonicon (the incentive for going with Yarok seems to go away without Path). Perhaps get a Helix trigger going to beef up the storm count, but then there are few cards left; I coulnd't see a way to get a Helix trigger that then triggered Volute off the sorcery casts.
It looks like we want to have at least around 20 or so copies of Glorious Sunshine in play when we start combat, to draw all our creatures and have a bit extra.
Unfortunately, I didn't find a way to make the continual sacrificing of Great Furnace work. Sacrificing from a Master Transmuter activation is no problem, but after we activate a Floodchaser ability that isn't at the bottome of the layer, we have to activate a Master Transmuter next to put Great Furnace into play, if we resolve a Floodchaser copied ability, we won't have a target for it. (except occasional for higher up lands, but we can't count on those) But that costs us a blue mana; so it looks like we can't sustain this.
If we can't make the above work, we can still add Drownyard Temple for repeated sacrificing; that costs us a card slot, but we had one to spare, so we can still get 3 additional stages.
I think if you have Arcbond on a creature with deathtouch, and at least two on creatures without deathtouch, you can start a normally infinite computation, and switch off between the two normal creatures for as long as you want. Then at any point you can switch to the deathtouch creature and kill everything, leaving the opponent with an arbitrarily high life total.
Hmm, but that only allows arbitrarily large amounts of life, not creatures. If we switch from Profane Transfusion to Starlight, then deathtouch doesn't result in a large output, making it safe? Unless there's some other problem that I'm not aware of.
Edit: Nah, after you kill everything a large number of creatures can be produced, so the number of creatures at the end can still be arbitrarily large I guess.
Edit: Or can it? Each time we resolve an Arcbond from a creature other than the deathtouch creature, we will trigger the Arcbond on the deathtouch creature, so a lot of those Arcbond triggers will be waiting on the stack. The first deathtouch Arcbond trigger will take out all the Necromancers, but can still produce a lot of creatures. But then the second deathtouch Arcbond will take out all the remaining creatures, and no more will be produced. So maybe Starlight makes deathtouch safe after all?
Suppose at a certain tick N tokens of a group die, and M tokens live. The oldest of the N tokens must have taken N+M damage, but must have taken less than N damage when the oldest of the M tokens was created. So the oldest of the M tokens must have taken more than M damage, and therefore will die, a contradiction.
Otherwise we can of course stick with Infectious Inquiry, and hopefully get more full combo draws. Search for Glory gets a few more legendary creatures, not a lot, so maybe we can get 3 or 4 SSA draws?
Edit: It looks like there are 11 creatures that are not legendary or artifacts. So we have 9 slots for draws of things besides those creatures or SSA (including the II and Worldfire that we need). If we want to get 2,3,4, or 5 SSA draws, we will have 8,6,4,2 slots respectively, so 3 or 4 is probably right.
We may be able to get more Sams before combat with a different line of play, but this looks like the best deck so far.
Looking at the remaining options: Sam, Loyal Attendant really does look like a great card, but it doesn't pair with Smoke Spirits' Aid, and I believe SSA just wins, since it has to potential to allow us to do the full combo before we go into combat.
Ideally Infectious Inquiry would be the best card to pair with SSA, since it is the one support card among those we have been considering that can draw it. (other than Caress of Phyrexia, but that seems worse) Adding Veyran, but sticking with Panharmonicon and Mirror Gallery to otherwise minimize our creature count, we have 15 creatures we need to draw, along with SSA. With 3 extra card slots in our opening hand, we have 21 slots available, so we have 5 cards of slack. If we want to draw SSA on the 7th or 8th II, we have 1 card or 3 card slots of slack respectively. I believe FortyTwo managed it earlier with 4 cards of slack? That means we wouldn't be able to cast SSA and get the full combo going until the last II draw, so that we get one full combo from SSA. That can still be beaten with the other support cards, since we can draw SSA in our opening hand, and we just need to be able to cast it and get access to the remaining deck at some point.
But, maybe it's possible with fewer slack required; with 3 slack, we can still get two castings of SSA, which would definitively put us ahead of the support cards that can't draw SSA.
Actually, now that I think about it, with 4 slack, we can draw all but one creature, and still draw SSA on the 8th II. Then, we can cast and resolve SSA without doing the combo yet, then resolve the final II and draw the last creature and SSA again. So we can get 2 castings of SSA with 4 cards of slack. If we can cut that down to 2 cards of slack, we can cast SSA 3 times before combat, but that may be a tall order.
The idea behind attacking triggers like Jolene, the Plunder Queen is that we would add something that can put an attacker onto the battlefield, like Launch the Fleet. Of course, this uses up a card slot, so we lose the extra layer that we get from Jolene, and it winds up tying the other options we had.
Another nice benefit from going back to Mirror of Fate, is that we can no longer replenish the opponent's deck. So, cards like Sphinx of Enlightenment and Words of Wisdom are back in play. A nice ending sequence is
Smoke Spirits' Aid
Consecrated Sphinx
Sphinx of Enlightenment
which should get us something like BB_{w^3 + w3 + 2}(X) with X around 50. This could theoretically be beaten by Glorious Sunrise or Sam, Loyal Attendant if we can get more than 50 copies at the beginning of combat, but that looks unlikely with no more supporting cards.
Edit: Oh, I guess we can donate copies of Mirror of Fate and the opponent can replenish their library themselves. Meh.
Sam does look good though.
Instead of Jolene though, we could have SSA + Search the Premises, where Search the Premises basically works like Jolene, producing a bunch of Clue token creations, each of which can draw increasingly more cards thanks to Ashnod. But again that ties it with the 3-card Glorious Sunrise options, since we need to add an attacker here as well.
Edit: Oh wait, we don't have a way to bring the Clue tokens to our control.
The other reason we need Riftsweeper /Mirror of Fate is to get our cards back after a Worldfire. This seems harder, since the exiling happens during the megastage transition, so we can't just tuck the cards in the library in the higher stage. But, it seems reasonable that we can resolve down to the next hyperstage transition, then after making a new transition we can get copies of Mirror of Fate, and use those to put Mirror of Fate activations on the stack below the megastage transition. So it looks like it's doable?
Edit: Looked at the opening a bit, seems pretty hard without Path of the Schemer. Presumably you break out Chromescale Drake early, maybe with Yarok or Panharmonicon (the incentive for going with Yarok seems to go away without Path). Perhaps get a Helix trigger going to beef up the storm count, but then there are few cards left; I coulnd't see a way to get a Helix trigger that then triggered Volute off the sorcery casts.
It looks like we want to have at least around 20 or so copies of Glorious Sunshine in play when we start combat, to draw all our creatures and have a bit extra.
Unfortunately, I didn't find a way to make the continual sacrificing of Great Furnace work. Sacrificing from a Master Transmuter activation is no problem, but after we activate a Floodchaser ability that isn't at the bottome of the layer, we have to activate a Master Transmuter next to put Great Furnace into play, if we resolve a Floodchaser copied ability, we won't have a target for it. (except occasional for higher up lands, but we can't count on those) But that costs us a blue mana; so it looks like we can't sustain this.
If we can't make the above work, we can still add Drownyard Temple for repeated sacrificing; that costs us a card slot, but we had one to spare, so we can still get 3 additional stages.
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
6 Dralnu's Crusade
Starting a Computation
7 Opalescence
8 Wrong Turn
9 Kaervek's Spite
10 Goblin Boom Keg
11 March of the Machines
Utility
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Metalworker
14 Twinning Glass
15 Thousand-Year Storm
16 Bloodbond March
17 Chancellor of the Annex
Foundry Stage
18 Cephalid Pathmage
19 Soul Foundry
20 Emblem of the Warmind
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Riftsweeper
24 Chromescale Drake
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Moan of the Unhallowed
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Starlight
35 Abandon the Post
36 Abandon the Post
37 Mox Ruby
38 Yarok, the Desecrated
Blue Mana Stage
39 Master Transmuter
40 Floodchaser
41 Great Furnace
42 Ashnod the Uncaring
43 Brutal Suppression
44 Harmonic Prodigy
45 Drownyard Temple
46 Firebrand Ranger
47 Groundskeeper
48 Forest
49 Island
White Mana Stage
50 Ruin Ghost
51 Weathered Wayfarer
52 Archaeological Dig
53 Arboreal Grazer
54 Faerie Conclave
Start
55 Mana Crypt
56 Epic Experiment
57 Resurgent Belief
58 Omniscience
59 Smoke Spirits' Aid
60 Glorious Sunrise
Hmm, but that only allows arbitrarily large amounts of life, not creatures. If we switch from Profane Transfusion to Starlight, then deathtouch doesn't result in a large output, making it safe? Unless there's some other problem that I'm not aware of.
Edit: Nah, after you kill everything a large number of creatures can be produced, so the number of creatures at the end can still be arbitrarily large I guess.
Edit: Or can it? Each time we resolve an Arcbond from a creature other than the deathtouch creature, we will trigger the Arcbond on the deathtouch creature, so a lot of those Arcbond triggers will be waiting on the stack. The first deathtouch Arcbond trigger will take out all the Necromancers, but can still produce a lot of creatures. But then the second deathtouch Arcbond will take out all the remaining creatures, and no more will be produced. So maybe Starlight makes deathtouch safe after all?
Suppose at a certain tick N tokens of a group die, and M tokens live. The oldest of the N tokens must have taken N+M damage, but must have taken less than N damage when the oldest of the M tokens was created. So the oldest of the M tokens must have taken more than M damage, and therefore will die, a contradiction.