Show and Tell had the problem of allowing the opponent to get mana, which would allow them to use a donated Soul Foundry to interrupt a computation.
One possible solution is to replace March of the Machines with, say, Karn, Silver Golem. Then, we can't unanimate an animated artifact, and the opponent will not be able to tap them to activate an ability. As I recall, the main problem with this is how to keep Coat of Arms alive during a computation, since we can't unanimate it. We could perhaps do so with Darksteel Forge or Guardian Beast? That takes up the card slot we save with Show and Tell, but at least we can get Omniscience in play with 4 cards, so the start should be faster. (assuming this all works)
I feel like we've tried this before though. Was there an issue with Darksteel Forge?
Yeah, however we're getting white has to also be available at the beginning I guess. Maybe it's hard to make work.
Ooh nice! So we'll be able to deal something like BB_{w^3 + w2 + 6} (BB_{w^3 + w2 + 2} (6)) damage I think.
Yeah, targeting triggers both Grip of Chaos and Psychic Battle, and then each time you reselect a target with Grip of Chaos, you trigger Psychic Battle as well (even though it's a random choice). So that's worth an additional 2 layers, with the Psychic Battle trigger basically being a "free" layer since we already have Psychic Battle in our deck.
Edit: Yeah, we don't have quite enough life to make it work with Mycosynth Lattice. We need 8 colored mana, so Bucknard's Everfull Purse is not enough; it would be with the aid of Mondrak, but we have to cast Bucknard's first.
Edit: Bleah, I forgot that Twinflame needed extra mana too... okay I'm not sure what's best in the 6 card category then.
Edit: Oh, we only need one more target for Twinflame, which we can get with Mycosynth Lattice.
Edit: Oh I see... Croaking Counterpart doesn't give haste, so the damage is for the *next* turn.
We could switch to Elder Druid and Geothermal Crevice just to save white for the ending layers, but I'm not sure how to profit from that. What's a good way to pay white mana to get a lot of green mana?
Hmmm... Flash might be fine now, with Soul Foundry instead of Mimic Vat. Nice catch! We'll also have three cards left in our hand after Omniscience hits the battlefield, which will definitely help the start.
We can go up to BB_{w^3 + w2 + 6}(X) in a variety of ways, for example
Not sure what to do about the 60th card... We want to be able to create a bunch of white mana, but we can't use something like Smoke Spirits' Aid because we can draw cheaper than white mana. So we need something else limited that can create white mana. (combat being an obvious possibility)
Edit: Oh no, we need the white mana land to come in tapped. So still need to save a card or two.
Edit: I guess we're also not replenishing blue mana in the Green Mana stage, so we need something like an Island. 2 cards over.
Edit: And, without generating a bunch of white mana, we only get enough draws from Glorious Sunrise to get one or two layers from the white mana stage, which is worse than what we have with 2 additional stages. So we need 3 more cards.
Problems: we need to replace Dreamscape Artist with something that can fetch a land, but not the Forest we're using in the second stage. I'm thinking about Master Transmuter along with an artifact land maybe. Will we get enough red mana from using Master Transmuter on Mox Ruby and Great Furnace? We can only get as many abilities of Master Transmuter as red mana we spend on Kurkesh, so it looks like each blue mana we spend can multiply the amound of red mana by a constant, providing we can get multiple (but constant) red mana per ability. That doesn't sound like enough.
Idea: We can have green mana as the third additional stage using Elder Druid, and then the second additional stage could be white mana using Ruin Ghost, with a land that sacrifices to get mana, but doesn't always come into play tapped.
The issue is how to get it from the graveyard to the battlefield tapped using a white mana. We also can't be able to use the white mana to fetch the green mana land. Hmmm... this could be difficult.
Hmm, we could perhaps save a card by replacing Arboreal Grazer with something that spent a green or white mana to put a land onto the battlefield (untapped); then we could drop Ruin Ghost. The only card I found was Gretchen Titchwillow, which unfortunately moots card draw. That seems like a bigger blow than what we gain from an extra card slot.
An extra stage would be awesome, and we appear to have enough colors for it; the main problem seems to be coming up with 3 different resources for the 3 colors, along with ways to cycle them for each color. In addition to just the basic land versus nonbasic land split, we could also separate by the different basic land types. Another possibility is lands that come in tapped. Possibily artifact lands? Master Transmuter could put an artifact land onto the battlefield, but that seems like all we need, as that seems to be the only disadvantage artifact lands have to Mox Ruby.
For lands coming into play tapped, one way we could profit from them is a trigger or activated ability that doesn't require tapping. But that seems like it might be pretty easy to recycle, hence harder to make a cycle that requires two different abilities of the same color. Perhaps easier would be for one of the abilities be an untap, from perhaps Captain of the Mists or Ruin Ghost. Then the other needed ability could be retrieving it from the graveyard or library, or putting it into play from our hand.
So perhaps first additional stage could be basic land, second could be untap + retrieving a particular basic land type (so one of the typed dual lands that come into play tapped), then general lands for the third.
I'll think about this for a bit.
Edit: Oh right, both Ruin Ghost and Captain of the Mists will generate too much mana if the land can keep getting mana by untapping, and I don't think any of the dual lands sac themselves for mana.
Another idea: the typed land stage will just have abilities to bring a typed land to our hand, and an ability to put a typed land onto the battlefield.
Edit: Hmmm... there are various cards that can fetch or put down various land types, but not many that require a colored mana payment. (unfortunately I think all the specific land type cyclers use generic mana to activate)
It would be nice if we could replace Chancellor of the Tangle with something that could gain us 2 mana. Mana Vault can be donated to the opponent unfortunately, and Ancient Tomb would crowd Archaeological Dig. I briefly wondered whether we could use Mox Diamond in place of Archaeological Dig, but then we would only need one ability (e.g. Realm Seekers) to bring a land to our hand, then we can get both land and diamond back into the library with Worldfire.
Does Illusionist's Bracers go infinite just from acting at sorcery speed? We can target a creature cheaply, but only at sorcery speed, so there won't be any BBM or PB/Cowardice triggers to take advantage of Cephalid Pathmage getting bounced back to our hand. So maybe at least that's okay?
Of course, there would still be the problem of equipping the Bracers at instant speed. But, we could perhaps go the same route as with Kurkesh - make it to expensive to go infinite with Cephalid Pathmage. Maybe Stonehewer Giant? Then we could add a Mox Pearl to get expensive but not too expensive access to white mana. The additional stages could perhaps be blue and green.
Putting aside the new stages for now, one problem is how to get the Bracers into the library - oh, and we also need to get token copies of the Bracers equipped if we want to get that layer of triggers.
So Stonehewer Giant is perhaps difficult to make work - is there another way to get not-too-cheap equippings of IB?
The obvious thing is that it can be around for computations, which looks pretty bad. But, we won't have a hand, or any permanents on the battlefield besides enchantments. So I'm not seeing danger from hand or battlefield. The only problem I'm seeing is the ability to cast our flasbhack sorceries. Helix and Volute will be taken off the battlefield... but oh wait, Spellweaver Volute can be brought back by Archon of Falling Stars, and can enchant an instant in the graveyard like Artificial Evolution. So yeah, we would be able to flashback a sorcery trigger Volute to cast Artificial Evolution, which is no good.
I would kinda want to get rid of Twinning Glass somehow, I feel like there should be a way around it.
Edit: Wait. Wait wait wait.
We're going through a lot of effort to get copies of creature abilities. Why aren't we using Illusionist's Bracers? Soul Foundry can't use them. Is there any other ability that we're trying to avoid copies of?
Of course we are currently using Harmonic Prodigy and Psychic Battle in the ending layers, so the improvement will be less than 3 layers in all likelihood. But, maybe this makes it easier to have three additional stages?
One possible solution is to replace March of the Machines with, say, Karn, Silver Golem. Then, we can't unanimate an animated artifact, and the opponent will not be able to tap them to activate an ability. As I recall, the main problem with this is how to keep Coat of Arms alive during a computation, since we can't unanimate it. We could perhaps do so with Darksteel Forge or Guardian Beast? That takes up the card slot we save with Show and Tell, but at least we can get Omniscience in play with 4 cards, so the start should be faster. (assuming this all works)
I feel like we've tried this before though. Was there an issue with Darksteel Forge?
Ooh nice! So we'll be able to deal something like BB_{w^3 + w2 + 6} (BB_{w^3 + w2 + 2} (6)) damage I think.
Yeah, targeting triggers both Grip of Chaos and Psychic Battle, and then each time you reselect a target with Grip of Chaos, you trigger Psychic Battle as well (even though it's a random choice). So that's worth an additional 2 layers, with the Psychic Battle trigger basically being a "free" layer since we already have Psychic Battle in our deck.
Edit: Yeah, we don't have quite enough life to make it work with Mycosynth Lattice. We need 8 colored mana, so Bucknard's Everfull Purse is not enough; it would be with the aid of Mondrak, but we have to cast Bucknard's first.
Edit: Bleah, I forgot that Twinflame needed extra mana too... okay I'm not sure what's best in the 6 card category then.
Edit: Oh, we only need one more target for Twinflame, which we can get with Mycosynth Lattice.
Edit: Oh I see... Croaking Counterpart doesn't give haste, so the damage is for the *next* turn.
Edit: Wait, is the only problem with Shigeki, Jukai Visionary the fact that it can retrieve SSA? Because then we can just not have SSA.
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 Cephalid Shrine
Foundry Stage
18 Cephalid Pathmage
19 Soul Foundry
20 Emblem of the Warmind
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Riftsweeper
24 Shriekhorn
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Lingering Souls
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Profane Transfusion
35 Hungry for More
36 Hungry for More
37 Mox Ruby
38 Panharmonicon
39 Arcanist's Owl
Blue Mana Stage
40 Dreamscape Artist
41 Floodchaser
42 Mountain
43 Gauntlet of Might
44 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
45 Harmonic Prodigy
46 Path of the Schemer
47 Ruin Ghost
48 Shigeki, Jukai Visionary
49 Archaeological Dig
Start
50 Mana Crypt
51 Chancellor of the Tangle
52 Replenish
53 Omniscience
54 Infectious Inquiry
Layers
55 King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
56 Tolarian Kraken
57 Warden of the Woods
58 Grip of Chaos
59 Entangling Trap
60 Sentry Oak
Instead of Grip of Chaos we'd rather add a layer below card draw, so that Infectious Inquiry gets buffed as well. But, with Shigeki we can't add a card that is ending sequence powerful when drawn, and I don't immediately see something better than Tolarian Kraken / King Macar, the Gold-Cursed. (Nyx Lotus would also work)
Another random thought. Use Flash of Defiance and Acorn Harvest for our flashback sorceries, removing K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. Use [d]Divine Favor[/c] instead of Pious Interdiction. Red mana is now cheap so we don't need Mountain + Gauntlet of Might, can just use Forest. If we need to use Weathered Wayfarer for the second additional stage, we lose a card slot, but we're still one ahead it seems like.
So something like:
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 Iron Myr
14 Twinning Glass
15 Thousand-Year Storm
16 Bloodbond March
17 Cephalid Shrine
Foundry Stage
18 Cephalid Pathmage
19 Soul Foundry
20 Emblem of the Warmind
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Riftsweeper
24 Shriekhorn
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Flash of Defiance
29 Archon of Falling Stars
30 Divine Favor
Helix Megastage
31 Spellweaver Helix
32 Worldfire
33 Profane Transfusion
34 Acorn Harvest
35 Acorn Harvest
36 Mox Emerald
37 Panharmonicon
38 Arcanist's Owl
Blue Mana Stage
39 Dreamscape Artist
40 Floodchaser
41 Forest
42 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
43 Harmonic Prodigy
44 Path of the Schemer
45 Ruin Ghost
46 Weathered Wayfarer
47 Archaeological Dig
48 Arboreal Grazer
49 Faerie Conclave
Start
50 Mana Crypt
51 Chancellor of the Tangle
52 Replenish
53 Omniscience
54 Infectious Inquiry
Layers
55 Smoke Spirits' Aid
56 Pain Seer
57 Tolarian Kraken
58 Warden of the Woods
59 Entangling Trap
60 Sentry Oak
Edit: Oh no, made red mana TOO cheap. Drats.
We can go up to BB_{w^3 + w2 + 6}(X) in a variety of ways, for example
+Smoke Spirits' Aid
+Pain Seer
-King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
Edit: In the 3 stage deck, we could replace Firebrand Ranger with Gretchen Titchwillow, which would allow us to drop Arboreal Grazer. It would also give us an avenue to draw cards another way.
So, we're at:
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 Cephalid Shrine
Foundry Stage
18 Cephalid Pathmage
19 Soul Foundry
20 Emblem of the Warmind
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Riftsweeper
24 Shriekhorn
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Lingering Souls
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Profane Transfusion
35 Hungry for More
36 Hungry for More
37 Mox Ruby
38 Panharmonicon
39 Arcanist's Owl
Blue Mana Stage
40 Master Transmuter
41 Floodchaser
42 Great Furnace
43 Blood Moon
44 Gauntlet of Might
45 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
46 Harmonic Prodigy
47 Path of the Schemer
48 Gretchen Titchwillow
49 Groundskeeper
50 Forest
51 Island
White Mana Stage
52 Ruin Ghost
53 Weathered Wayfarer
54 Archaeological Dig
55 Faerie Conclave
Start
56 Mana Crypt
57 Flash
58 Omniscience
59 Infectious Inquiry
Not sure what to do about the 60th card... We want to be able to create a bunch of white mana, but we can't use something like Smoke Spirits' Aid because we can draw cheaper than white mana. So we need something else limited that can create white mana. (combat being an obvious possibility)
Edit: Oh no, we need the white mana land to come in tapped. So still need to save a card or two.
So...
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 Cephalid Shrine
Foundry Stage
18 Cephalid Pathmage
19 Soul Foundry
20 Emblem of the Warmind
21 Cowardice
22 Psychic Battle
23 Riftsweeper
24 Shriekhorn
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Spellweaver Volute
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Lingering Souls
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Profane Transfusion
35 Hungry for More
36 Hungry for More
37 Mox Ruby
38 Panharmonicon
39 Arcanist's Owl
Blue Mana Stage
40 Master Transmuter
41 Floodchaser
42 Great Furnace
43 Blood Moon
44 Gauntlet of Might
45 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
46 Harmonic Prodigy
47 Path of the Schemer
48 Firebrand Ranger
49 Groundskeeper
50 Forest
White Mana Stage
51 Ruin Ghost
52 Weathered Wayfarer
53 Archaeological Dig
54 Arboreal Grazer
55 Faerie Conclave
Start
56 Mana Crypt
57 Chancellor of the Tangle
58 Replenish
59 Omniscience
60 Infectious Inquiry
61 Glorious Sunrise
Oof, one card too many?
Edit: I guess we're also not replenishing blue mana in the Green Mana stage, so we need something like an Island. 2 cards over.
Edit: And, without generating a bunch of white mana, we only get enough draws from Glorious Sunrise to get one or two layers from the white mana stage, which is worse than what we have with 2 additional stages. So we need 3 more cards.
Problems: we need to replace Dreamscape Artist with something that can fetch a land, but not the Forest we're using in the second stage. I'm thinking about Master Transmuter along with an artifact land maybe. Will we get enough red mana from using Master Transmuter on Mox Ruby and Great Furnace? We can only get as many abilities of Master Transmuter as red mana we spend on Kurkesh, so it looks like each blue mana we spend can multiply the amound of red mana by a constant, providing we can get multiple (but constant) red mana per ability. That doesn't sound like enough.
The issue is how to get it from the graveyard to the battlefield tapped using a white mana. We also can't be able to use the white mana to fetch the green mana land. Hmmm... this could be difficult.
An extra stage would be awesome, and we appear to have enough colors for it; the main problem seems to be coming up with 3 different resources for the 3 colors, along with ways to cycle them for each color. In addition to just the basic land versus nonbasic land split, we could also separate by the different basic land types. Another possibility is lands that come in tapped. Possibily artifact lands? Master Transmuter could put an artifact land onto the battlefield, but that seems like all we need, as that seems to be the only disadvantage artifact lands have to Mox Ruby.
For lands coming into play tapped, one way we could profit from them is a trigger or activated ability that doesn't require tapping. But that seems like it might be pretty easy to recycle, hence harder to make a cycle that requires two different abilities of the same color. Perhaps easier would be for one of the abilities be an untap, from perhaps Captain of the Mists or Ruin Ghost. Then the other needed ability could be retrieving it from the graveyard or library, or putting it into play from our hand.
So perhaps first additional stage could be basic land, second could be untap + retrieving a particular basic land type (so one of the typed dual lands that come into play tapped), then general lands for the third.
I'll think about this for a bit.
Edit: Oh right, both Ruin Ghost and Captain of the Mists will generate too much mana if the land can keep getting mana by untapping, and I don't think any of the dual lands sac themselves for mana.
Another idea: the typed land stage will just have abilities to bring a typed land to our hand, and an ability to put a typed land onto the battlefield.
Edit: Hmmm... there are various cards that can fetch or put down various land types, but not many that require a colored mana payment. (unfortunately I think all the specific land type cyclers use generic mana to activate)
Looking at possible card savings, I'm again drawn to the size of our additional stages, Twinning Glass, and some of are partially duplicated cards like Panharmonicon / Harmonic Prodigy and Archon of Falling Stars / Arcanist's Owl. But, not seeing any ways to cut cards at the moment.
It would be nice if we could replace Chancellor of the Tangle with something that could gain us 2 mana. Mana Vault can be donated to the opponent unfortunately, and Ancient Tomb would crowd Archaeological Dig. I briefly wondered whether we could use Mox Diamond in place of Archaeological Dig, but then we would only need one ability (e.g. Realm Seekers) to bring a land to our hand, then we can get both land and diamond back into the library with Worldfire.
Of course, there would still be the problem of equipping the Bracers at instant speed. But, we could perhaps go the same route as with Kurkesh - make it to expensive to go infinite with Cephalid Pathmage. Maybe Stonehewer Giant? Then we could add a Mox Pearl to get expensive but not too expensive access to white mana. The additional stages could perhaps be blue and green.
Putting aside the new stages for now, one problem is how to get the Bracers into the library - oh, and we also need to get token copies of the Bracers equipped if we want to get that layer of triggers.
So Stonehewer Giant is perhaps difficult to make work - is there another way to get not-too-cheap equippings of IB?
Hmm, what would go wrong if we switched from Vedalken Orrery to Leyline of Anticipation? With the goal of removing Twinning Glass.
The obvious thing is that it can be around for computations, which looks pretty bad. But, we won't have a hand, or any permanents on the battlefield besides enchantments. So I'm not seeing danger from hand or battlefield. The only problem I'm seeing is the ability to cast our flasbhack sorceries. Helix and Volute will be taken off the battlefield... but oh wait, Spellweaver Volute can be brought back by Archon of Falling Stars, and can enchant an instant in the graveyard like Artificial Evolution. So yeah, we would be able to flashback a sorcery trigger Volute to cast Artificial Evolution, which is no good.
I would kinda want to get rid of Twinning Glass somehow, I feel like there should be a way around it.
Edit: Wait. Wait wait wait.
We're going through a lot of effort to get copies of creature abilities. Why aren't we using Illusionist's Bracers? Soul Foundry can't use them. Is there any other ability that we're trying to avoid copies of?
If not, then maybe
+Illusionist's Bracers
+Sigarda's Aid
-Psychic Battle
-Gauntlet of Might
-Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
-Harmonic Prodigy
-Path of the Schemer
saving 3 card slots?
Of course we are currently using Harmonic Prodigy and Psychic Battle in the ending layers, so the improvement will be less than 3 layers in all likelihood. But, maybe this makes it easier to have three additional stages?
Edit: Oh, I remember - equip targets too cheaply.