MTG Salvation

Yeah, neither one would require The Binding of the Titans, unfortunately.

I didn't make the original rules, but certainly it appears that an uninterruptible infinite won't disqualify a deck, unless you were dealing damage during the infinite. The "no infinite" rule really just means there has to be an upper bound to how much damage the deck can deal, so an uninterruptible infinity during which no damage is dealt wouldn't impact that.


Edit: Oh, but it looks like you are dealing damage in the loop. Hmmm... under the original rules, this would deal an infinite amount of damage, and thus be disqualified? It's up to interpretation I think - under the rules, when you see that you are in an uninterruptible infinite loop, you stop the game and agree to a draw. So perhaps the game would be stopped before to much damage is dealt? I dunno.

Now, we have been tweaking the rules a bit, like requiring that you win the game, or the "score" being the negative of your opponent's final life. For the former the deck would not be disqualified, for the latter, there are cards that would prevent a player from going negative. (like Angel of Grace)

I think the only difficult part of that is getting rid of the real Spark Double. Deafening Clarion will have a hard time getting rid of the real Spark Double without eliminating the token Spark Double as well. But Justice Strike or Flicker of Fate should work fine.

Actually, perhaps we can pair Justice Strike with Teysa Karlov as that will be more efficient than Deafening Clarion.


Edit: No, with Teysa Karlov, we can gain life with Justice Strike. But, Final Payment should work fine.


Edit: Looking at possible improvements to the chain, The Binding of the Titans could lead to significant improvements over Kiora Bests the Sea God, since it doesn't untap, so we could have tapped lands or Nyx Lotus come in later. Also we don't have to donate to the opponent, so problems that arise from that (like the Smothering Tithe problem) might not be an issue. However, the problem is that I don't know of a good way to put a land into play untapped. Chulane, Teller of Tales certainly looks like it will go infinite.

I guess that is a key thing to look for in upcoming sets - a good way to put a land onto the battlefield untapped.

Well, we can add Karn, the Great Creator to animate Vivien's Arkbow early - but, how does it work with Leafkin Druid and Scampering Scorcher?


Edit: Oh, I see - we can just use Quasiduplicate to make as many copies of Leafkin Druid as we choose. Nice.

Not sure why I bothered to do this, but I did:



Edit: We can do better, by chaining 15 Repeated Reverberations together, and casting both Quasiduplicate and [c}Role Reversal[/c] at the end:

Start with 2 Leylines of Abundance, 1 Leyline of Anticipation, 17 life, 0 floating, 1 card in hand, 0 storm after Bolas's Citadel is cast.
Cast Repeated Reverberation, 13 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 1 storm.
Cast Revenge, 56 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 2 storm.
Cast Revenge, 100 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Thousand-Year Storm, 94 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Clackbridge Troll, 89 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Angel of Vitality, 86 life, 0 floating, 1 card, 3 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, 85 life, 8G 4U floating, 1 card, 4 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 84 life, 18G 9U floating, 1 card, 5 storm.
Cast Claim the FIrstborn, 83 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 6 storm.
Cast Claim the Firstborn, resolve TYS trigger - 82 life, 30G 15U floating, 1 card, 7 storm.
Respond by casting Devious Cover-Up from our hand - 82 life, 28G 13U floating, 0 cards, 8 storm.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 78 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 9 storm, 9 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 74 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 10 storm, 28 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 70 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 11 storm, 67 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a Claim the Firstborn, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 66 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 12 storm, 146 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 62 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 13 storm, 305 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 58 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 14 storm, 624 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 54 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 15 storm, 1263 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 50 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 16 storm, 2542 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 46 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 17 storm, 5101 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 42 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 18 storm, 10,220 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 38 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 19 storm, 20,459 RR triggers.
Resolve a Devious Cover-Up, counter a CtF, shuffle four RR's into the library.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 34 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 20 storm, 40,938 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 30 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 21 storm, 81,897 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 26 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 22 storm, 163,816 RR triggers.
Respond by casting Repeated Reverberation - 22 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 23 storm, 327,655 RR triggers.

Resolve 187,234 Repeated Reverberations.
REspond by casting Quasiduplicate - 19 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards 24 storm, get 374,492 copies.
Create 280,870 copies of Angel of Vitality, 93,622 copies of Clackbridge Troll.
Resolve remaining 140,421 Repeated Reverberations.
Respond by casting Role Reversal - 16 life, 28G 13U, 0 cards, 25 storm, get 280,867 copies.
Exchange 280,867 Angels of Vitality over to the opponent, for Goat tokens.

Cast Smothering Tithe - 12 life.
Cast Smothering Tithe - 8 life.
Cast Smothering TIthe - 4 life.
Cast Happily Ever After - 10 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, opponent has 280,873 life.

Cast Venture Deeper, putting the cards in our library into the graveyard. 9 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Respond by casting Vivien's Arkbow. 7 life, 28G 13U 3W, 1 card, 26 storm.
Use the Arkbow to retrieve Scholar for the Ages, returning Dance of the Manse and Quasiduplicate. 7 life, 21G 13U 3W, 3 cards, 26 storm.
Cast Dance of the Manse from our hand, return all enchantments and artifacts from our graveyard as animated creatures, including Leyline of Abundance, 3 Thousand-Year Storms, Rhythm of the Wild, Kiora Bests the Sea God, Vivien's Arkbow, Smothering Tithe, but not another Happily Ever After. 7 life, 27 storm.
Cast Vindictive Vampire. 3 life, 27 storm.
Resolve the remaining Venture Deepers, putting our library into our graveyard.
Resolve 4 Devious Cover-Up, counter 1 CSU and 3 CtF, shuffling up to 16 cards into the library.
Resolve the last CtF, gaining 3 green and 1 blue mana.
Cast Collision. Resolve a TYS trigger, destroy Maraleaf Pixie, gain 5 life. 6 life, 28 storm. Opponent has 280,872 life.
Respond by casting Disentomb. Resolve one TYS trigger, bringing Maraleaf Pixie, Spark Double, Frilled Mystic, Scholar of the Ages, Arboreal Grazer, Beanstalk Giant to our hand. 5 life, 29 storm.
Play Maraleaf Pixie from our hand.
Cast Repeated Reverberation. 1 life, 30 storm, 117 RR triggers.
Respond with Quasiduplicate, get 355 copies. Create 355 more Angel of Vitality (359 total on our side) 1 life, 31 storm.
Resolve another Collision TYS trigger, destroy the Maraleaf Pixie, gain 360 life. 361 life, 31 storm, opponent has 280,871 life.

With 361 life and with access to most of the cards, we can perform the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion, I believe. So things really take off from here.


Edit: Hmmm... with 100 life we have more than enough to get all our cards out, and run the entire combo up to Deafening Clarion already. The problem is, we don't have enough Leyline of Abundances to pay all the generic mana costs that we need. Still, for each Claim the Firstborn that we cast, we add triple our storm count in mana, allowing us to quadruple our storm count with some cheap green and blue instants/sorceries. So we can still get about 7 layers up to Deafening Clarion, before putting the first Happily Ever After into play.

So, the best way to improve the start would be to figure out a way to run the stage combo, without having to cast Dance of the Manse first.

Yup, log(X) is good enough for another layer. So, Grasping Thrull is just an "extra card" that we can use for a minute advantage, and it's pretty far down the list.

Ah, interesting trick. (I had to look at the rules again - we don't get the +1/+1 counter if we apply another copy effect, but we're just copying a Spark Double and not using it to copy anything, so we do get the counter!) So yeah, we actually gain 8 green mana from the Pixies and need to spend 8, so we won't have any extra for Quasiduplicate and Devious Cover-Up. So, if it winds up being best to have 4 Leyline of Abundance at the start, we can just add a Leafkin Druid. If not, we can just retrieve an extra Leyline of Abundance with [c}Dance of the Manse[/c], and make copies as needed.


Edit: Oh wait, we don't have an easy way to recycle Leafkin Druid. Well gee... I guess we have to add Return to Nature if the 4 Leyline start works out the best. Unless there are enough better cards that we would be willing to use Bolas's Citadel to destroy a Leyline instead.

(another case of an edit not going through... not sure why this happens)


Edit: Oh, we can just use Aether Gust, much cheaper.

Hmm, I think we can have [c}Spark Double[/c] and two copies of Maraleaf Pixie, if we have no Mystic Forge or Karn, the Great Creator. Without any support, we won't have any way to recycle all the creatures without using Spark Double to help, so I don't see an infinite there.

I think Revival // Revenge is worse than Grasping Thrull, since it halves the opponent's life each time, so we can only use it about log(X) times when the opponent has X life. But, we want to have Revival // Revenge anyway, so Grasping Thrull becomes an extra card that we can add to make a small improvement - but it's probably a pretty low priority.

Oh right, Silverflame Squire shouldn't be there! Sorry about that.

Claim the Firstborn looks okay - the only problem I could think of is if it untapped something that came in tapped, but that is just our nonbasic lands, which aren't creatures.

I think we only need two mana for Vivien's Arkbow, to bring out Maraleaf Pixies? Each Pixie produces 1 blue and 4 green, so we should profit 2 green each time, enough for our castings of [c}Quasiduplicate[/c] and Devious Cover-Up. Am I missing any other costs?


Edit: Oh right, we need Collision as well. But, we get both Pixies each time we cast either of Quasiduplicate or Devious Cover-Up. So we spend 2+2+2 mana for two Pixies, which gives us 8 green mana, so we net 2 each round. We either spend both when we cast Devious Cover-Up, or we spend one when we cast Quasiduplicate. So we have a net gain of green mana overall.


Edit: Hmm, we can do much better at the start actually, if we use Revival // Revenge. We can cast Repeated Reverberation, Revenge, and then Revenge again, to take us to 100 life. That should be plenty to get started and get some pretty high combos. However, it looks like Dance of the Manse is the only way to animate enchantments, and therefore make copies of them. So we still can only put four Smothering Tithes into play for the first Happily Ever After. So our damage will still be between 3 -> 3 -> 51 -> 13 and 3 -> 3 -> 52 -> 13. (I haven't found a way to shuffle the opponent's graveyard into their library without going infinite - Emergency Powers will go infinite now that we can counter it, and so will Loaming Shaman.)

Fair enough, we'll be optimizing later anyway - still, I couldn't help putting some work into it, so I got this:

In the current deck, there seems to be no problem with playing a lifeland on turn 1, so we can start with 17 life.

Start with 4 Leylines, have 17 life, GU floating, 0 cards in had after Bolas's Citadel.
Spend 7 life to cast a Smothering Tithe and Happily Ever After, 15 life, GUW floating, 1 card in hand.
Spend 2 to cast Claim the Firstborn twice, 13 life, 9UUUW floating, 1 card.
Spend 3 to cast Venture Deeper three times, 10 life, 9UUUW floating, 1 card.
Mill 4 TYS, 3 Smothering Tithe, Happily Ever After, Leyline of Anticipation, Vivien's Arkbow, Kiora Bests the Sea God, and one other card.
Spend 9UUUW to bring the first 11 cards onto the battlefield.
Respond to Happily Ever After ETB trigger by casting Quasiduplicate. We get 25 copies, creating 25 more TYSes. 7 life, no cards or mana.
Respond again be casting a second Quasiduplicate. We get 204 copies, creating 204 more TYses, 233 total.
Respond again by casting a third Quasiduplicate. We get 1865 copies, creating 1865 more Smothering Tithes, 1869 total.
Resolve the Happily Ever After trigger. Wind up with 1869 mana, 6 life, 1 card.
Spend 3 life to cast Rhythm of the Wild, 3 life.
Spend 2 life to cast Maraleaf Pixie, 1869W, GGGGU, 1 life, 1 card.
Cast Heliod's Intervention for X = 6: gain 12 * 2098 = 25,176 life. 1866W, 25,177 life, 0 cards in hand.

Having just two Smothering Tithes in play for the second Happily Ever After seems really bad, I was hoping we could get a lot more.

Castle Locthwain looks like a good replacement for two of the shocklands (we could replace Maraleaf Pixie with Leafkin Druid in the opening) - except for the draw, which runs into problems with donated Smothering Tithes again. Phooey.

Do we have a way to reshuffle the opponent's graveyard into their library? Otherwise, without Emergency Powers, we will only be able to use Happily Ever After 51 times, rather than 53.

Good point about saccing the treasures, and yeah Karn seems to fix that. Still don't know how to take advantage of that possibility, though.

Nice! A blank Spark Double is very convenient.

Is there some way we can put maybe three Smothering Tithes into play before the first [c}Happily Ever After[/c], so that we have to white mana left over for a casting of Heliod's Intervention? We can always add extra cards to help out.

So, I had an idea for an extension:

-We can sacrifice 10 permanents, including Clockwork Servant. (In this chain, this would be the only way of destroying Clockwork Servant.)

-We cast Clockwork Servant using 3 green mana, with a lot of Yaroks on the battlefield, triggering a bunch of card draws.

-With each card draw, we draw a lifeland.

-We put the lifeland into play with many Yaroks on the battlefield, triggering many 1 life gains.

-For each life gain, we gain a lot of life, thanks to Angel of Vitality.

-We spend some life to cast Wanderer's Strike from the library, getting many copies and many proliferates.

This would get us back up to 14 layers. But, that card draw runs into the problem with Smothering Tithe again. Still, using Wanderer's Strike to get proliferates is an interesting option - it loses a layer versus Deafening Clarion and Martyr for the Cause, but it frees up creature damage I guess.

I was wondering if there might be a way to use that donated Smothering Tithe thing, and get at least one layer in between opponent draw and our own draw. But, I don't see a way to do that right now.

Ooh, nice catch. Fortunately, we were switching out of Vilis anyway, so that change fixes the Smothering Tithe problem as well. I believe Vilis was the only other card that allowed us to draw?

We are bound to have extra card slots, and they will probably go to things like extra Smothering Tithes and Happily Ever Afters, so we won't necessarily need to destroy them. Anyway, we will keep both configurations in mind.


Edit: Hmm, looking at Deafening Clarion again, the layer we get for killing a bunch of copies of Martyr for the Cause doesn't stack with the layer for Teysa Karlov. So we lose a layer, down to about 3 -> 3 -> 53 -> 13.

Hmm, so we can go with Vivien's Arkbow + Mystic Forge + Return to Nature, or just Vivien's Arkbow + Karn, the Great Creator. The latter could be better despite the more difficult setup, if we can find something useful to do with the extra card slot, which we probably will.


Edit: Hmm, there is a problem with the life-to-creature destruction part of the chain: Gideon's Sacrifice is white, but we have neither the white mana nor the life to cast it at that point. But, we can go back to Deafening Clarion, which seems fine.

Both Arcanist's Owl and Mystic Forge look good! I guess with Mystic Forge we won't have to bother with a Quasiduplicate to fetch the artifact.

Oh, but Nature's Claim will go infinite with Dance of the Manse and Quasiduplicate.

Hmm, so Animating Faerie is a no go. Cards like Masterful Replication and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer also are no good, since they can create more Smothering Tithe tokens. But, we can make it work, but with even more of a pain to set up: instead of Animating Faerie, we use Karn, the Great Creator, which will kill any Treasure tokens that we try to animate.

It would probably be easier to be able to fetch Vivien's Arkbow from the library or graveyard, but I don't really see anything suitable. Emry, Lurker of the Loch looked like it had promise, but any copies that we make of it won't naturally have haste, and to retrieve it from the library seems to require the use of a Vivien's Arkbow that we are trying to retrieve. So, I don't see how to make that work.