But, our traditional stages made heavy use of creature types, which are messed up thanks to Artificial Evolution now. We can still use colors, but if try to use Chrome Mox for mana stages, it seems like we can't have both a stage creature and a transition creature, since the transition creature would have to be the same color as the stage creature, and having two creatures of the stage color along with Chrome Mox would go infinite. So it is somewhat harder to make stages than it was before.
Welcome back Stakfish! Already with the cool ideas.
Edit: I think there's no worry about going infinite if we don't save Coat of Arms; then creatures' toughness is never boosted, so Arcbonded creatures will die in a set number of damage instances.
Edit: Okay, so the big issue is this: We need to not have a Xathrid Necromancer, or whatever we are using to create the tokens, on our side during the computation, or we can affect the outcome by choosing whether to resolve it before or after the Arcbond triggers. A lot of our machinations have been around making sure that a Xathrid Necromancer is not on our side during these computations. So your idea is really good, but to make it work, we need to have the Necromancer have to be gone somehow.
Edit: Hmmm, what about a destroy/sacrifice all creatures that we control, plus March of the Machines? So we have to kill off all our creatures and and artifacts in order to get the computation started. Looks like a possibility.
Of course, constantly killing off all our creatures means that we probably won't be able to have creature layers or stages. But, there are still the possibilities of mana and life stages.
So, we start a computation by playing Desolation Giant with March of the Machines on the battlefield, destroying all our creatures and enchantments. Killing off Perilous Myr allows us to damage an opponent's Arcbonded creature, and start the computation. Seething Anger allows us to bounce all our artifacts, which we can play and get copies of thanks to Mirrorworks. In particular, we can play Vedalken Orrery, get a copy, bounce it with Seething Anger, then play it again and get a Mirrorworks trigger. We can then respond to the trigger by playing the Desolation Giant, and after the computation is done, the Mirrorworks trigger will resolve, and we will get Vedalken Orrery back.
Oof. After a more thorough look-through, it looks like I am missing Recoup, Harmless Offering, and Caged Sun from the deck. Which puts us one card over.
Do you guys see ways to cut card slots in this latest deck? If not, this may be the first deck that is otherwise working, but we have to reject due to the size limitation.
Hmm, making the sequence work is actually rather troublesome. We can't just replace Floodchaser, with, say, Svyelunite Temple. We need some way to get it back; and we can't just use Quarry Beetle, since that needs green mana for Natural Order. So we have to use green mana first. But what for? Splendid Reclamation is no good, because that's what we are saving Quarry Beetle for. So I'm not sure even how to start after blue mana.
Using green mana to recycle Kiora would be nice, since it would also save Eureka.
Edit: Is there a cheap way to return a land to the battlefield, as in something that doesn't require colored mana other than blue or red? I'm thinking of using life early on in the sequence, so we can use green mana for Stream of Life. But, I'm not sure how to transition to life from say blue mana.
We'd like to move Kiora earlier, so that we can go back to the Sunspring Expedition strategy. However, right now we have too many things transitioning down to mana - we have green creatures transitioning to Hidden Herbalist producing green mana, Quarry Beetle transitioning to a land producing white mana, and Unstable Frontier making Swamps to produce black mana. So there's no mana color left for Kiora to transition to, if we want to put it below Unstable Frontier. It looks like we would have to make one of the creature layers transition to something else. Kiora is the obvious choice - if we could find a creature that is green or of CMC <= 2 that can allow us to recycle Kiora, we could get Sunspring Expedition again.
I don't see a way to transition from black to blue, so right now we are at like 10 -> 13X -> 11 before combat.
Edit: Hmmm, now that this version doesn't have Deepwood Elder, maybe jfb's idea to put in Natural Order and recycle some green creature for its ETB, can work? We could use something like Plant Elemental to sacrifice a Forest, or Quarry Beetle to return a land.
The problem is, it could also recycle Horned Kavu in the current deck. If we put green creatures above white creatures, then Horned Kavu could return the green creature that we are using for ETB. So we have a conflict. But, there could be other ways to use Return to the Ranks. Any ideas?
So, the only way I found to incorporate both creature layers was to put Kiora after Unstable Frontier, and then we end on opponent life rather than our own. So no Sunspring Expeditions unfortunately. Still, the main goal is another layer.
9 would be fine, we only have 6 even with Confessor. Is there some way to kill our first Zetalpa, or any indestructible legendary creature, without needing a second?
So, do we go infinite if we have 5-6 Rotlung Reanimators? FortyTwo described an infinite computation, but it had 12 RR's. What is the minimum number that is needed? It's worth figuring out I think.
Good finds. Luckily, we already have Settle Beyond Reality, so we only lose one layer from losing Horned Kavu. But, using Dimir Aqueduct to generate blue mana directly will lose three layers. It would be nice to add some sort of transition from black mana to blue mana, although we are quite low on card slots.
So it would be back to maxing out the pre-combat portion of the combo.
Edit: So, we could add a layer by adding in Nexus of Fate. We could also get a layer by adding in Honor-Worn Shaku, but only if we use Seize the Day, rather than what should be Relentless Assault. So, we might be better off going back to the Deepwood Elder version. Damn, this one card is changing everything.
Dralnu's Crusade is player-neutral, so it doesn't matter who has them.
The idea is to Mirrorweave all of the enchantments beforehand, and then to kill off Aura Thief with Mogg Infestation. But, I haven't worked through the beginning yet to see if this all works out okay. Obviously things could get hairy without some of our enchantments.
Oh, the Centaur Peacemakers were supposed to be replaced with arbitrary cards that we can draw and discard.
So, we get 1 + 53 + 60 + 6 = 120 big life gains, for BB_16 (120). I don't see how to get big life gains off of our own draw or discard; for our draw, we multiply by our Alhammarret's Archives, and we can't really discard anything, except the extra creatures, which we gain life with by playing anyway. If we could discard the extra creatures, then bring them onto the battlefield, we could get a few extra.
Edit: So, we don't want Dawn to Dusk in this case, so instead we will use Stern Proctor and Settle Beyond Reality. This allows us to bounce our artifacts, so we can use them as discards.
Also, adding Aura Thief allows for the following: Create some enemy creatures, play an enchantment with Starfield of Nyx on the battlefield, use Mirrorweave to turn all the enemy creatures into copies of the enchantment, and use Aura Thief to get the enchantments back. I don't think we can use this on a few of the enchantments though. We can't use it on Revenge of Ravens, because we have to keep giving the opponent control of one and removing it, and Aura Theif can only be used once it seems. We can't use it on Leyline of Punishment, since we need to avoid having that in play until the end of the game. And we can't use it on the two Auras. But the other seven can be brought back to our hand and discarded, I think.
Okay, so some bad news. It would be nice if we could prove that the FWM was Turing complete, then we wouldn't need the Dralnu's Crusades.
And yeah, it's too bad we can only use one of a generic nonbasic land. It would be nice to be able to use snow mana for something, since we can actually differentiate snow lands. But I didn't see anything particularly useful with snow mana. (We used to use Ohran Yeti and Cowardice, but we can't have Cowardice anymore, since we could bounce the Necromancer.)
Hmmm, that's a good point. Okay, I need to modify the argument a bit.
So, in such a case, it is possible for our sum to stay the same. In this case though, initial type Y is "dominated" by Z - Z has all of Y's creature types, and more. So, we can only stay constant for dominated initial types. Of course, there must be at least one undominated type. Now, for this undominated type Z, for it to stick around, we must keep creating new ones. But, each time we create new Z's our sum goes down, by previous arguments. (Either there were already Z's, in which case we lose the creature type that created the Z's and we drop an initial creature type, or there were no Z's, and we lose the RR that triggers the creation, since there can be no dominating initial type that supports Z creatures.) So, if we move forward to the next time time a Z is created, there can be some other trigger creations during this time, but they either keep the sum constant or decrease it. Then, when the Z is created, it decreases the sum. If Z eventually dies permanently, then we can move on to the next undominated type.
Hopefully this works.
Hmmm... that's too bad, I was hoping we could get one or two layers from Nissa's Expedition. So, it looks like Deepwood Elder is the only way to add a layer that we currently know of.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
10 March of the Machines
11 Goblin Boom Keg
12 Vedalken Orrery
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
16 Cowardice
17 Mirrorworks
I've got a good feeling about this idea.
Edit: So, contemplating stages - the easiest and most prolific way to make stages seems to be the Bloodbond March / Rings of Brighthearth/Psychic Battle/Grip of Chaos method. Of couse, we can also try to add other ideas to add on to this.
But, our traditional stages made heavy use of creature types, which are messed up thanks to Artificial Evolution now. We can still use colors, but if try to use Chrome Mox for mana stages, it seems like we can't have both a stage creature and a transition creature, since the transition creature would have to be the same color as the stage creature, and having two creatures of the stage color along with Chrome Mox would go infinite. So it is somewhat harder to make stages than it was before.
Edit: I think there's no worry about going infinite if we don't save Coat of Arms; then creatures' toughness is never boosted, so Arcbonded creatures will die in a set number of damage instances.
Edit: Okay, so the big issue is this: We need to not have a Xathrid Necromancer, or whatever we are using to create the tokens, on our side during the computation, or we can affect the outcome by choosing whether to resolve it before or after the Arcbond triggers. A lot of our machinations have been around making sure that a Xathrid Necromancer is not on our side during these computations. So your idea is really good, but to make it work, we need to have the Necromancer have to be gone somehow.
Edit: Hmmm, what about a destroy/sacrifice all creatures that we control, plus March of the Machines? So we have to kill off all our creatures and and artifacts in order to get the computation started. Looks like a possibility.
Of course, constantly killing off all our creatures means that we probably won't be able to have creature layers or stages. But, there are still the possibilities of mana and life stages.
Edit: Okay, so here's a starting idea:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Mirrorweave
6 Dowsing Dagger
7 Dralnu's Crusade
8 Starfield of Nyx
10 March of the Machines
11 Perilous Myr
12 Indestructibility
13 Vedalken Orrery
14 Spellweaver Volute
15 Pull from Eternity
16 Recoup
18 Mirrorworks
So, we start a computation by playing Desolation Giant with March of the Machines on the battlefield, destroying all our creatures and enchantments. Killing off Perilous Myr allows us to damage an opponent's Arcbonded creature, and start the computation. Seething Anger allows us to bounce all our artifacts, which we can play and get copies of thanks to Mirrorworks. In particular, we can play Vedalken Orrery, get a copy, bounce it with Seething Anger, then play it again and get a Mirrorworks trigger. We can then respond to the trigger by playing the Desolation Giant, and after the computation is done, the Mirrorworks trigger will resolve, and we will get Vedalken Orrery back.
Do you guys see ways to cut card slots in this latest deck? If not, this may be the first deck that is otherwise working, but we have to reject due to the size limitation.
Using green mana to recycle Kiora would be nice, since it would also save Eureka.
Edit: Is there a cheap way to return a land to the battlefield, as in something that doesn't require colored mana other than blue or red? I'm thinking of using life early on in the sequence, so we can use green mana for Stream of Life. But, I'm not sure how to transition to life from say blue mana.
Edit: Okay, another proposed deck:
2 Violent Outburst
3 Hypergenesis
4 Omniscience
5 Thousand-Year Storm
6 Spellweaver Volute
7 Pull from Eternity
8 Recoup
9 Coat of Arms
10 Xathrid Necromancer
11 Arcbond
12 Artificial Evolution
13 Mirrorweave
14 Dowsing Dagger
15 Dralnu's Crusade
16 Starfield of Nyx
17 Caltrops
18 Chameleon Blur
19 Upwelling
21 Bonded Fetch
22 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
23 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
24 Desolation Giant
25 Mystic Speculation
26 Fuel for the Cause
27 Mana Echoes
28 Seize the Day
29 Red Mana Battery
30 Great Furnace
31 Rings of Brighthearth
32 Amulet of Vigor
33 Echo Storm
34 Svyelunite Temple
35 Splendid Reclamation
36 Hidden Herbalists
37 Panharmonicon
38 Return to the Ranks
39 Icatian Town
41 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
42 Sarkhan the Masterless
43 Carven Caryatid
44 Natural Order
45 Hunting Drake
46 Silver Drake
47 Kin-Tree Invocation
48 Unstable Frontier
49 Victorious Destruction
50 Angelheart Vial
51 Flame Rift
52 Alhammerret's Archive
53 Mirror Gallery
54 Temple Bell
55 Spiritual Focus
56 Coercion
57 Possessed Portal
58 Leyline of Punishment
In this case, we can have both Red Mana Battery and Angelheart Vial, to limit the damage to just one layer. With Angelheart Vial, there's no hope of ending in our life, so no Sunspring Expedition.
We'd like to move Kiora earlier, so that we can go back to the Sunspring Expedition strategy. However, right now we have too many things transitioning down to mana - we have green creatures transitioning to Hidden Herbalist producing green mana, Quarry Beetle transitioning to a land producing white mana, and Unstable Frontier making Swamps to produce black mana. So there's no mana color left for Kiora to transition to, if we want to put it below Unstable Frontier. It looks like we would have to make one of the creature layers transition to something else. Kiora is the obvious choice - if we could find a creature that is green or of CMC <= 2 that can allow us to recycle Kiora, we could get Sunspring Expedition again.
I don't see a way to transition from black to blue, so right now we are at like 10 -> 13X -> 11 before combat.
Edit: Hmmm, now that this version doesn't have Deepwood Elder, maybe jfb's idea to put in Natural Order and recycle some green creature for its ETB, can work? We could use something like Plant Elemental to sacrifice a Forest, or Quarry Beetle to return a land.
The problem is, it could also recycle Horned Kavu in the current deck. If we put green creatures above white creatures, then Horned Kavu could return the green creature that we are using for ETB. So we have a conflict. But, there could be other ways to use Return to the Ranks. Any ideas?
Edit: So, how about the following:
2 Eureka
3 Omniscience
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Spellweaver Volute
6 Pull from Eternity
7 Recoup
8 Coat of Arms
9 Xathrid Necromancer
10 Arcbond
11 Artificial Evolution
12 Mirrorweave
13 Dowsing Dagger
14 Dralnu's Crusade
15 Starfield of Nyx
16 Caltrops
17 Chameleon Blur
18 Upwelling
19 Rayami, First of the Fallen
20 Bonded Fetch
21 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
22 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
23 Desolation Giant
25 Mana Echoes
26 Seize the Day
27 Great Furnace
28 Rings of Brighthearth
29 Amulet of Vigor
30 Echo Storm
31 Floodchaser
32 Blessings of Nature
33 Hidden Herbalists
34 Panharmonicon
35 Return to the Ranks
36 Icatian Town
37 Ruins of Trokair
38 Quarry Beetle
39 Natural Order
40 Hunting Drake
41 Silver Drake
42 Morbid Bloom
44 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
45 Sarkhan the Masterless
46 Yawgmoth's Bargain
47 Angelheart Vial
48 Flame Rift
49 Alhammerret's Archive
50 Mirror Gallery
51 Temple Bell
52 Spiritual Focus
53 Coercion
54 Possessed Portal
55 Leyline of Punishment
4 Soul Scourge
1 Laquatus's Champion
So, the only way I found to incorporate both creature layers was to put Kiora after Unstable Frontier, and then we end on opponent life rather than our own. So no Sunspring Expeditions unfortunately. Still, the main goal is another layer.
The last Deepwood Elder version doesn't create our own creature tokens, but we do have some of our own creatures. Besides Rayami and Bonded Fetch, we also have Xathrid Necromancer / Rotlung Reanimator, Deepwood Elder, Floodchaser, and two Zetalpas. We would like to have Confessor as well.
So, do we go infinite if we have 5-6 Rotlung Reanimators? FortyTwo described an infinite computation, but it had 12 RR's. What is the minimum number that is needed? It's worth figuring out I think.
So it would be back to maxing out the pre-combat portion of the combo.
Edit: So, we could add a layer by adding in Nexus of Fate. We could also get a layer by adding in Honor-Worn Shaku, but only if we use Seize the Day, rather than what should be Relentless Assault. So, we might be better off going back to the Deepwood Elder version. Damn, this one card is changing everything.
The idea is to Mirrorweave all of the enchantments beforehand, and then to kill off Aura Thief with Mogg Infestation. But, I haven't worked through the beginning yet to see if this all works out okay. Obviously things could get hairy without some of our enchantments.
Oh, the Centaur Peacemakers were supposed to be replaced with arbitrary cards that we can draw and discard.
Proposed deck:
2 Eureka
3 Omniscience
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Spellweaver Volute
6 Pull from Eternity
7 Recoup
8 Coat of Arms
9 Xathrid Necromancer
10 Arcbond
11 Artificial Evolution
12 Mirrorweave
13 Dowsing Dagger
14 Dralnu's Crusade
15 Starfield of Nyx
16 Caltrops
17 Chameleon Blur
18 Upwelling
20 Bonded Fetch
21 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
22 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
23 Mogg Infestation
24 Mystic Speculation
25 Mana Echoes
26 Seize the Day
27 Red Mana Battery
28 Ventifact Bottle
29 Dismantle
30 Great Furnace
31 Amulet of Vigor
32 Rings of Brighthearth
33 Echo Storm
34 Floodchaser
35 Grave Strength
36 Dimir Aqueduct
38 Sharkhan the Masterless
39 Horned Kavu
40 Return to the Ranks
41 Icatian Town
42 Ruins of Trokair
43 Splendid Reclamation
44 Unstable Frontier
45 Melt Terrain
46 Revenge of Ravens
47 Alhammarret's Archive
48 Mirror Gallery
49 Oona's Grace
50 Curse of Fool's Wisdom
51 Confessor
52 Disrupting Scepter
53 Leyline of Punishment
54 Dawn to Dusk
2 Skystreamer
So, we get 1 + 53 + 60 + 6 = 120 big life gains, for BB_16 (120). I don't see how to get big life gains off of our own draw or discard; for our draw, we multiply by our Alhammarret's Archives, and we can't really discard anything, except the extra creatures, which we gain life with by playing anyway. If we could discard the extra creatures, then bring them onto the battlefield, we could get a few extra.
Edit: So, we don't want Dawn to Dusk in this case, so instead we will use Stern Proctor and Settle Beyond Reality. This allows us to bounce our artifacts, so we can use them as discards.
Also, adding Aura Thief allows for the following: Create some enemy creatures, play an enchantment with Starfield of Nyx on the battlefield, use Mirrorweave to turn all the enemy creatures into copies of the enchantment, and use Aura Thief to get the enchantments back. I don't think we can use this on a few of the enchantments though. We can't use it on Revenge of Ravens, because we have to keep giving the opponent control of one and removing it, and Aura Theif can only be used once it seems. We can't use it on Leyline of Punishment, since we need to avoid having that in play until the end of the game. And we can't use it on the two Auras. But the other seven can be brought back to our hand and discarded, I think.
So, we have:
2 Eureka
3 Omniscience
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Spellweaver Volute
6 Pull from Eternity
7 Recoup
8 Coat of Arms
9 Xathrid Necromancer
10 Arcbond
11 Artificial Evolution
12 Mirrorweave
13 Dowsing Dagger
14 Dralnu's Crusade
15 Starfield of Nyx
16 Caltrops
17 Chameleon Blur
18 Upwelling
19 Rayami, First of the Fallen
20 Bonded Fetch
21 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
22 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
23 Mogg Infestation
25 Mana Echoes
26 Seize the Day
27 Red Mana Battery
28 Ventifact Bottle
29 Dismantle
30 Great Furnace
31 Amulet of Vigor
32 Rings of Brighthearth
33 Echo Storm
34 Floodchaser
35 Grave Strength
36 Dimir Aqueduct
37 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
38 Sharkhan the Masterless
39 Horned Kavu
40 Return to the Ranks
41 Icatian Town
42 Ruins of Trokair
43 Splendid Reclamation
45 Melt Terrain
46 Revenge of Ravens
47 Alhammarret's Archive
48 Mirror Gallery
49 Oona's Grace
50 Curse of Fool's Wisdom
51 Confessor
52 Disrupting Scepter
53 Leyline of Punishment
54 Stern Proctor
55 Settle Beyond Reality
56 Aura Thief
4 Centaur Peacemaker
So, this should give is 1 + 53 + 60 + 10 + 7 + 4 = 135 life gains, for BB_16(135).
And yeah, it's too bad we can only use one of a generic nonbasic land. It would be nice to be able to use snow mana for something, since we can actually differentiate snow lands. But I didn't see anything particularly useful with snow mana. (We used to use Ohran Yeti and Cowardice, but we can't have Cowardice anymore, since we could bounce the Necromancer.)
So, in such a case, it is possible for our sum to stay the same. In this case though, initial type Y is "dominated" by Z - Z has all of Y's creature types, and more. So, we can only stay constant for dominated initial types. Of course, there must be at least one undominated type. Now, for this undominated type Z, for it to stick around, we must keep creating new ones. But, each time we create new Z's our sum goes down, by previous arguments. (Either there were already Z's, in which case we lose the creature type that created the Z's and we drop an initial creature type, or there were no Z's, and we lose the RR that triggers the creation, since there can be no dominating initial type that supports Z creatures.) So, if we move forward to the next time time a Z is created, there can be some other trigger creations during this time, but they either keep the sum constant or decrease it. Then, when the Z is created, it decreases the sum. If Z eventually dies permanently, then we can move on to the next undominated type.
Hopefully this works.
Hmmm... that's too bad, I was hoping we could get one or two layers from Nissa's Expedition. So, it looks like Deepwood Elder is the only way to add a layer that we currently know of.
Edit: Okay, a deck with Deepwood Elder:
2 Eureka
3 Omniscience
4 Thousand-Year Storm
5 Spellweaver Volute
6 Pull from Eternity
7 Recoup
8 Coat of Arms
9 Xathrid Necromancer
10 Arcbond
11 Artificial Evolution
12 Mirrorweave
13 Dowsing Dagger
14 Dralnu's Crusade
15 Starfield of Nyx
16 Armed // Dangerous
17 Chameleon Blur
18 Upwelling
20 Bonded Fetch
21 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
22 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
23 Mogg Infestation
24 Mystic Speculation
25 Mana Echoes
26 Seize the Day
27 Great Furnace
28 Amulet of Vigor
29 Rings of Brighthearth
30 Echo Storm
31 Floodchaser
32 Blessings of Nature
33 Deepwood Elder
34 Break Through the Line
35 Sanitarium Skeleton
36 Dimir Aqueduct
38 Sarkhan the Masterless
39 Horned Kavu
40 Return to the Ranks
41 Empyrial Storm
42 Unstable Frontier
43 Victorious Destruction
44 Angelheart Vial
45 Flame Rift
46 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Mirror Gallery
48 Oona's Grace
49 Spiritual Focus
50 Coercion
51 Possessed Portal
52 Leyline of Punishment
4 Centaur Peacemaker
4 Skystreamer