MTG Salvation

Also, we can get rid of Flood of Recollection and Bolt Bend. So the deck looks like:



I replaced Adventurous Impulse with Vivien's Invocation, it seems a little better.

While I'm still hoping for two stages, I went back for a bit and considered the deck with just the AR stage. It would be nice to improve it by allowing for Quasiduplicate.

What if we replaced the Flux Channelers with a spell that proliferates, like Courage in Crisis? It looks like Courage in Crisis can be cast when needed, so it should work. But, I think Quasiduplicate still goes infinite. After we resolve a couple of artifact ARs to destroy the Rakdos Lockets, we need to cast Finale of Devastation (or whatever we are using) to bring the lockets back. But, after we resolve the next couple of artifact ARs, we can get them back by casting Quasiduplicate on the Golgari Findbrokers, getting the lockets and also The Mending of Dominaria. We can then cast an artifact AR, cast Courage in Crisis to proliferate and reshuffle the graveyard into the library, and cast a creature AR. So we are in the same place as before.

So, it looks like the Cleansing Nova deck is still the best we have.

Hmm, Arch of Orazca might be useful for drawing planeswalkers to cast them, but then we have to deal with those damn lockets again. Is there any other way to get white mana? Maybe we have to wait for Core 2019 for some good mana artifacts.

Well, we can use Bolas's Citadel to cast Angrath's Rampage, so that we pay life rather than red or black mana. Then, we wouldn't have life to spare for casting our planeswalkers, so we would be forced to use Interplanar Beacon, which conveniently can't be used to cast AR.

But, unfortunately there's nothing stopping us from storing our mana in advance. So we can cast a planeswalker AR and respond with a creature AR. The creature AR can repeatedly sacrifice Interplanar Beacon, and collect us a lot of planeswalker mana. Then the planeswalker AR will allow us to sacrifice and cast a planeswalker multiple times. So this doesn't look like it can force us to resolve both ARs in succession.

It's possible that reshuffling and retrieving cards might be harder than it appears, and can somehow keep us from going infinite. But it looks hard to make work.

I too had hope for Karn's Bastion, but I haven't found a good thing to proliferate. If only The Eldest Reborn brought the planeswalker to our hand, or if Interplanar Beacon triggered on entering the battlefield...

It's possible we may need to expand our search outside of Nova and AR. Possibly with a pair of similar cost spells like I mentioned above, or possibly a spell and a triggered ability.

Hmm, the big issue that I'm seeing is, how can we force ourselves to use a creature Cleansing Nova to recycle Molderhulk (or whatever creature), when we can pay a red and black mana to cast an Angrath's Rampage and sacrifice a creature? The same thing if we reverse the stages; how can we force ourselves to use an Angrath's Rampage to sacrifice a creature, if we can spend two white mana to cast a creature-destroying Cleansing Nova from the lower stage?

If we can't find a solution for this, we may need to switch out one or other of our stage spells to have something that doesn't destroy or sacrifice creatures, so that the other stage can use creatures without interference. And perhaps, rather than have a single spell with multiple modes, it would be easier to use two spells that we can alternate. I'm not clear on what exactly though; if one of our stages uses AR, then that can sacrifice creatures, artifacts, and planeswalkers, then the other stage can use enchantments, and what else? Similarly if we use CN, then the other stage can have planeswalkers, but I'm not sure what else.


Edit: Okay, it looks like a pretty good solution to the above is going back to the previous version; using your suggestion, Sylvan Awakening turns lands into indestructible creatures, that can be sacrificed via Angrath's Rampage, but cannot be destroyed by Cleansing Nova. So we are back to the problem of how to deal with the lockets. The obvious solution is to remove Omniscience, so that drawing a card doesn't really help us. This will cut off things like Ionize later on, but first we have to get this deck working.

It looks like the previous combo mostly works without Omniscience[/c], except that we need to spend another white mana to cast Excavation Elephant, so we need another Orzhov Locket and Spark Double. The biggest problem is probably how to get started; what is our new start, without Omniscience? Apex of Power would be nice, but since we can draw cards at the cost of five white/black mana, drawing Apex of Power allow us to get 10 mana of any kind, going infinite. Since drawing is less helpful, Emergency Powers has a possibility of being safe, but still looks iffy since it is really cheap way to draw Excavation Elephant and also reshuffle. What other useful cards are there to help out the start?


Edit: Well, I guess the previous combo doesn't mostly work, because we need to force ourselves to use a creature AR somehow. This should be sacrificing a land, to make it so that a creature Nova can't accomplish the same thing. And we also need to have to use a planeswalker AR (unless we can find a way to use an artifact AR, without having the ability to substitute the Purity Nova for it). Due to the sorcery speed for planeswalker abilities, it looks like Interplanar Beacon is the only method we currently have for recycling planeswalkers. Unfortunately, Interplanar Beacon doesn't need to tap to get life, so all we need is to recycle our planeswalkers to gain life. It doesn't look like reshuffling can be a barrier because we can cast a Wrath Cleansing Nova to achieve that. So perhaps retrieving planeswalkers could be the thing that we need. But the only thing I can think of to use lands for is proliferate, and the card that I was counting on the proliferate, The Eldest Reborn, doesn't work. So I am circling around the same problems again.


Edit: Ooh, I have an idea. We can use Interplanar Beacon not just to get us 1 life for playing a planeswalker, but also to provide the mana to cast it as well. Then we need to recycle the Interplanar Beacon as well, so we need both a creature AR and a planeswalker to gain our life back. We just need our planeswalkers to be of a color or colors that we don't have access to.

Hmm, so I guess we go with your turn 4 setup for now. It looks good, but it does lock us into Evolution Sage I suppose.

I don't think any way we return the planeswalkers is going to solve the locket problem. If we can draw the higher stage main spell using mana from the lower stage, I think it goes infinite.

I guess we don't have to switch stages necessarily - we could have Cleansing Nova stage on the bottom, and have that recycle lands as well.


Edit: Okay, here's a first attempt at having Angrath's Rampage as the bottom stage and Cleansing Nova as the top:



The plus side is, without animated lands, I don't see why we can't use the original 3 turn start. We deal a little less damage, since we can't use Revival // Revenge quite as effectively; casting Cleansing Nova costs five life a pop, and we can't build up a lot of life unless we add a life outlet to the Cleansing Nova stage (which we might want to do). On the other hand, we might use life to gain actual layers.

We lose Grand Warlord Radha, but we can replace that with many copies of Azor, the Lawbringer.


Edit: So, the main issue as of now seems to be, how to make it so that we have to use both versions of our main spell in the higher stage to collect our stage resource. In the previous version, we could destroy a planeswalker with Angrath's Rampage, but then we need to require a creature AR to keep going. I thought maybe The Eldest Reborn could be used, but it doesn't bring the planeswalker back to our hand; Vivien's Grizzly doesn't seem to make us have to use a creature AR.

In the later version, we can destroy Fall of the Thran with our Purity Cleansing Nova, and then we can bring back it back with Tragic Poet to destroy our lands, and then bring back our lands with Grow from the Ashes. It seems difficult to use reshuffling to make us have to use a creature Nova, since we can start an AR stage with some stored mana at any time. But, does that use up too much black mana. I guess that's something that we need to investigate.

Another idea is to use Elvish Rejuvenator to bring back our lands, and maybe those need to be destroyed by a creature Nova. But, the Rejuvenator brings back the lands tapped, unfortunately.


Edit: I guess there is Llanowar Scout. Could that work?

We can also go:

Turn 3
Island
Llanowar Elves

Turn 4
Giant Growth
Giant Growth
tap Marwyn for 8
Omniscience
Emergency Powers

Whoops, yeah The Eldest Reborn doesn't work. The problem with Vivien's Grizzly is that we won't need to use a creature Angrath's Rampage to use it - if we've stored up some white mana, we can enter a Nova stage to reshuffle and gain some green mana, so we can gain 1-2 life with each planeswalker AR.


Edit: Oh, we don't need the elves to cast the Omniscience. Perhaps do without the Emergency Powers? Still, it's nice to get those 7 cards. It certainly looks like that first start you mentioned requires all but one card to cast Omniscience.


Edit: Hmm, there is a problem with the lockets - we can use them to generate some white/black mana, and then sacrifice them to draw two cards, one of which could be Angrath's Rampage. Actually, these mana artifacts kinda suck for our purposes!

This is actually quite a tricky problem. Mox Amber could get us one white mana, but we need two somehow. I see two options: one is to remove Omniscience, so that drawing doesn't do much good. Another is to switch the order of our two stages.

Looking at the latter option first - we could use animated lands to produce mana for Angrath's Rampage, I suppose. But then we need to find a way to gain resources for the Cleansing Nova stage. It looks like the thing that Cleansing Nova has access to that AR does not is enchantments - how can we use enchantments to gain white mana? (or maybe life)

Hm maybe, but can we also draw Angrath's Rampage with it?


Edit: Yeah, I think general drawing will be a problem since we could draw AR with just a copy of AR. But, I think I have the answer: Use The Eldest Reborn, along with either Evolution Sage or Karn's Bastion. So, I think it is close to working!


Edit: So, a first attempt:



What issues do we still have?

The AR stage can lead into anything that can generate life or red mana, but there's doesn't seem to be much space left to produce either. Combat seems like an obvious option, and Grand Warlord Radha seems like the big producer here. Not sure what else we can do; cards that exile themselves that we can't counter are an option, as our cards that use the opponent's life or library. Smothering Tithe is of course on the table, but Induced Amnesia is probably not safe at this point. Although actually, Unmoored Ego can get us 53 draws, so with 4 Smothering Tithes that's 212 mana.

I guess Revival // Revenge can get us to 160 life as well.

We have to be careful with the reshuffling though; remember that we can generate white mana to start the Nova stage at any time, and we can get reshufflings from there. There may be sections of the AR stage where it may not be possible to get reshufflings from the Nova stage due to stack issues, but we have to examine things pretty carefully.

Okay, that's good then. So we can save lands for Angrath's Rampage. So the question becomes: How do we set up the AR stage, if we use a creature AR to sacrifice lands to get our mana? What would require us to sacrifice an artifact? (I'm guessing that sacrificing a Planeswalker won't be all that much help, since we can't use Planeswalker abilities at instant speed. I suppose there is Interplanar Beacon, but does gaining life work here?) Or, can we use something else to separate the creature AR layers?

Ooh, that's a very intriguing idea! It's true that 3 -> 3 -> (3 -> 3 -> X -> 4) -> 4 is less than 3 -> 3 -> 27 -> 5, but if we can get one stage feeding in to another, that could potentially be a five chain, which would certainly be much more than 3 -> 3 -> 27 -> 5. We should definitely investigate this.

But, there is a definite concern that the lower stage can do things that can affect the higher stage. For starters, we have been using artifacts for both stages, so as it stands the lower stage could retrieve the artifacts for the higher stage mana, going infinite. How else can we differentiate mana for the different stages?

I guess if we have AR be the higher stage, we could use AR to destroy a plains, a swamp, and a mountain, and let The Mending of Dominaria fetch them back. Then the Nova stages could destroy the animated lands, but couldn't get them back without proliferate... but how do we make sure that the AR stage has access to proliferate, but not the Nova stage?

Hmm, this actually sounds really hard... but the payoff would be huge.

Yeah, I was thinking of The Mending of Dominaria, it looks like we have some options with it. But, if we add a couple of Flux Channelers, then using Adventurous Impulse or Finale of Devastation plus Tragic Poet will go infinite: we can use the sorcery to put the creature onto the battlefield, and proliferate counters go on the stack. Then we can sacrifice Tragic Poet bring The Mending of Dominaria onto the battlefield, and proliferate twice to reshuffle the graveyard into the library and destroy The Mending of Dominaria. So now we are back to where we started; cast Gift of Growth for some more mana, and repeat.

I guess the same loop will happen with Nature's Spiral. Perhaps Adventurous Impulse plus Golgari Findbroker? Then the Findbroker will be left on the battlefield, and we have to resolve an Angrath's Rampage to destroy it. This seems like it might work!

Okay, so say we have a stack of alternating casts of Angrath's Rampage. At the top we have a group of creature AR's. We cast Adventurer's Impulse, bringing Golgari Findbroker and The Mending of Dominaria onto the battlefield, but we do not advance TMOD to stage 3. We then resolve a creature AR, sacrificing the Findbroker, and the proliferate advances TMOD to stage 3, shuffles our graveyard into our library, and puts TMOD into the graveyard. So we can repeat this process for as long as we have creature AR's. So that works so far. We can then resolve a couple of artifact AR's to destroy a couple of Rakdos Lockets. We can then cast Adventurer's Impulse, to fetch I guess two Golgari Findbrokers to fetch the Lockets and get a black and a red mana. Now the Findbrokers are stuck on the battlefield, so we can cast a creature AR to sacrifice them again. So that seems to work. Then, when we are down to four or five AR's, we can resolve two, destroying the Lockets, cast Adventurous Impulse to get them back and tap them for mana, then resolve the next two or three artifact AR's to destroy them again. Now the Findbrokers are stuck on the battlefield again, so we can resolve the next creature AR to sacrifice a Findbroker, cast Adventurous Impulse to retrieve it and get The Mending of Dominaria. Then we can cast an artifact AR, and proliferate to reshuffle our graveyard into our library. Then we can cast a creature AR to rebuild our stage. So it seems like it all works.

We have to worry about the possibility resolving our four or five artifact AR's, then not resolving a creature AR, but instead recasting an artifact AR and then a creature AR, and then using the creature AR's to help retrieve our destroyed artifacts and getting our mana back. Let's investigate that; after the last creature AR, we have used Adventurous Impulse, so either we leave our AI and GF in the graveyard with TMOD on the battlefield, or we advance our TMOD, putting AI and GF in the library and TMOD in the graveyard. The latter is probably better. We then resolve two artifact AR's, and then we need to retrieve them before the next artifact AR's, so we have to cast AI and put our GFs on the battlefield. So our GFs are now on the battlefield, and either our AI is in the graveyard, or we used a TMOD again and AI is in the library. We then resolve the last artifact ARs. We can cast an artifact AR now. But now AR is in the graveyard, as is TMOD, and the GFs are on the battlefield. So casting AI won't get us a reshuffle, and we can't cast a creature AR now. So that is safe, so long as we have exactly enough GF's for the combo. (I think 3? We need to retrieve two artifacts after the first two artifact AR's, and I think we also need to retrieve TMOD.)

So I think that the above works. But, it looks like Quasiduplicate won't be good, at least with Golgari Findbroker. We can just cast Quasiduplicate to reshuffle, and that is cheap. That is quite hurtful; the motivation for switching was to get our mass untappers available, but without quasiduplicate there won't be masses to untap!

Let's see what we can get without Quasiduplicate. We can use Defiant Strike to be our card drawer; we no longer destroy all creatures, so there will be some, like Marwyn the Nurturer, that will hang around that we can target. Each Defiant Strike that we cast will take X to 3 -> 3 -> X. We can Ionize a Defiant Strike with lots of TYS copies on the stack, then each TYS copy of Defiant Strike can draw the Defiant Strike card to cast it again. So each Ionize will take X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 2. We can then use Sanguine Sacrament to gain a lot of life; each two white mana will take X to 3 -> 3 -> X -> 3. But, then we don't have ways to get tons of white mana, as for as I can tell. If the Smothering Tithe / Induced Amnesia combo is off the table, then the best thing I see is to have Nikya of the Old Ways and a couple of Spark Doubles (which can double as copies of Golgari Findbroker), and maybe 25-30 Plains. That will get us 3 -> 3 -> X -> 4 where X is between 50 and 60. This is still less than the Cleansing Nova deck, which can currently get around 3 -> 3 -> 27 -> 5.

Is there some way to amend the main combo? Maybe replace Golgari Findbroker?


Edit: I was happy for a moment, when I noticed that none of our spells besides Quasiduplicate required blue, and since we don't destroy all enchantments we don't need to recast Precognition Field and Omniscience. So we could conceivably make blue a scarce resource, and Quasiduplicate could come back in. Then I became sad when I noticed that Siren Stormtamer required a blue, and there doesn't seem to be a way around using that.

We could add a blue locket, but lockets require two colors, and unfortunately not every Angrath's Rampage needs to be countered by Stormtamer; specifically, the AR's we cast at the very top of the stage can just resolve, and we can then cast them again. So during those times we could use the locket for the other color of mana.

Angrath's Rampage would be great, if it weren't for that unfortunately low mana cost. As far as I know, Disdainful Stroke is the only ability in Standard that counters some but not all of instants/sorceries. Being able to counter everything would seem to get rid of the Warlord's Fury and Gaea's Blessing layers, which is a lot to give up. What do you think we could use to create an Angrath's Rampage stage? How can we transition into life gain?


Edit: Ooh, wait: Siren Stormtamer counters a spell that targets you or a creature you control, namely Angrath's Ramage. Most card drawers won't target us, but unfortunately Gaea's Blessing does. So we need a way to put cards back in our library other than Gaea's Blessing. Still, some new life for this idea!

In the original rules (for the Vintage challenge), if for any number N there was some way to achieve N or more damage, including luck and opponent cooperation, then the deck was deemed illegal. I suppose we could change that rule - I was never really all that fond of the "infinite with opponent cooperation" rule. It's true thought that cards that have opponent choices can be very difficult to analyze.

The targeting for Deliver Unto Evil could perhaps be solved by retrieving Bolt Bend, provided that there were two other cards that your opponent wanted you to have even less. I don't think that returning Gaea's Blessing would go infinite, since Deliver Unto Evil requires us to counter it with Ionize to keep going, just like Gaea's Blessing and Flood of Recollection. So we keep having to pay 2 life. For that same reason though, it doesn't seem like it could add any extra layers.

That does give me an idea though - perhaps there is a red or black card that could draw or retrieve Cleansing Nova to our hand, allowing us to avoid the white mana expenditure? Then we could use red or black mana for the stage, allowing us to use Sanguine Sacrament to gain life instead of Huatli, allowing our mass untappers to come back in.

We wouldn't want the red or black card to exile itself, since that would cost us 2 life to avoid that. Also, I think if it was CMC 4 or more and could fetch itself, it would go infinite with Disdainful Stroke. But, if it is CMC 3 or less and can fetch Cleansing Nova, I think it might work. And with the extra copies that it gets from Thousand-Year Storm, it might be worth an extra layer as well. Hmm, that would be bad if it could fetch Gaea's Blessing though; so actually that would be quite difficult.


Edit: Actually, I take that back. We can't just draw Gaea's Blessing, since if it resolves and goes to the graveyard, it is stuck there. The only way is to counter it and have it fetch itself, and that costs two life. So, if we add another card that can draw cards, it should be safe, at least in that respect.

Adding something like Bankrupt in Blood appears to go infinite though; we can cast it from the library at the cost of a black mana, and by casting it, we get many copies to draw Cleansing Nova, so we can wind up getting a lot of black mana in return. So the original idea of replacing white mana with black or red doesn't seem to work out. But, a red card like Warlord's Fury should be okay, since red mana is very expensive in our setup. So, we can cast Gaea's Blessing to draw Warlord's Fury many times, and then cast Warlord's Fury to draw Cleansing Nova many times and create a stage, adding another layer.

Oh good.

Yeah, I got a little carried away; we can't have Gaea's Blessing on the stack, since we need it to be in the library for the stage combo, so we need to counter every cast. I was thinking that we could use one copy from the countered Gaea's Blessing to draw Gaea's Blessing again and cast it, then we could draw and cast Cleansing Nova a bunch of times. But those Cleansing Novas are on top of the Gaea's Blessing below that we need to retrieve the second Gaea's Blessing.

I was hoping there was some way to get two layers from Ionize like we do in the 12-layer deck, but it doesn't seem possible.

I think we can get by without Bolt Bend though. The only card we need to shuffle in is the original Gaea's Blessing. So, after we cast Gaea's Blessing, but before the Thousand-Year Storm trigger resolves, we counter it, so the first TYS copy can target Gaea's Blessing in the graveyard. The remaining copies can just have no targets, and we can use them to draw Cleansing Nova.